Daily GPI

The Williams Companies completed the acquisition of Mapco Inc.shifting the bulk of the company’s assets into an unregulatedbusiness environment.

Trans Energy Inc. said its merger with Natural Gas TechnologiesInc. (NGTI), a privately held oil and gas company based in Dallas,was completed March 26.

Seagull Energy agreed to buy an interest in a package of onshoreoil and gas properties in East Texas and western Oklahoma for $102million. The Houston-based company is buying the stock of privatelyheld BRG Petroleum of Tulsa, OK, and the assets of BRG’s limitedpartnerships and programs. The deal should be completed in about 60days. Proved oil and gas reserves total about 103 Bcfe. Dailyproduction from the properties net to the combined BRG interestslast year averaged about 18 MMcf/d of gas and 400 barrels of oiland natural gas liquids. Seagull has identified more than 160drilling locations and 60 recompletion opportunities, primarily inEast Texas. Seagull said it expects significant increases in bothproved reserves and production over the next few years.

Cumberland Gas Pipeline Co., a general partnership of Williamsand AGL resources subsidiaries, is holding an open season for firmcapacity that started Monday and runs to May 29. The 141-mileCumberland Pipeline will initially consist of existing pipelineinfrastructure created by combining the 27-mile Suwanee lateral onWilliams’ Transco pipeline and Atlanta Gas Light’s 102-milemainline. The pipeline will run from the Transco mainline in WaltonCounty, GA, to Atlanta Gas Light’s interconnect with East TennesseeNatural Gas Co. in Catoosa County, GA. New facilities are expectedto be expanded north into Tennessee.

Energy Pacific launched a new energy service called Power ChoiceCalifornia, which will help companies make electricity buyingdecisions in a restructured marketplace. The company launched theservice through a pilot with Hewlett-Packard earlier this year andwill begin marketing the service in April. “We’re finding that manycustomers just don’t know where to begin when asking energyproviders for price quotes, or even what their energy options are,”said Eric Nelson, president of Energy Pacific, an unregulated jointventure of Pacific Enterprises and Enova Corp.

Cash prices for the last weekend of March appeared to be payingattention to weather fundamentals for a change Friday. Markets inthe West, where it was still cold enough to matter, tended to seegains of 2-5 cents. But east of the Rocky Mountains it was adifferent story as mild temperatures sent prices down by similaramounts.

The April Nymex contract went off the board in bearish fashionon Friday as the spot month fell 3.8 cents to conclude its tradingat $2.300. A broker noted this was as “boring” a settlement day ashe could remember, probably because low volatility last week gavetraders ample opportunities to get out of their positions beforeFriday, he said.

California regulators are expected to begin taking a much closerlook next week at proposals to curb market power in the state’s gasindustry, and their decisions could rapidly accelerate convergenceof the gas and electric industries. Included among the proposals isa plan to force the state’s major utilities to divest gastransmission and storage assets and form an independent gastransmission system operator, replicating part of what was done inthe state’s power industry. California natural gas industryrestructuring proceedings are scheduled to move into overdriveduring four day-long hearings starting April 6 in San Francisco.

In upholding the rolled-in rate settlement of PG&E GasTransmission Northwest Corp., the Federal Energy RegulatoryCommission ruled last week that replacement shippers who receivedpermanent releases of older, pre-expansion capacity were similarlysituated to the system’s expansion shippers and, therefore, shouldbe charged similar rates.