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Dominion, which already had some trading appetizers on thetable, is taking a bigger bite of the dotcom marketplace,announcing yesterday that its Dominion Energy Clearinghouse willoffer a one-stop shop customized for its wholesale customers toprice and buy energy commodities.

Responding to a California power market gone haywire andteetering on the brink of operational and financial disaster, FERCFriday issued a series of remedial measures, virtually strippingthe Cal-PX and Cal-ISO of their control of the market and callingmarket stakeholders together to negotiate bilateral forwardcontracts.

FERC last week gave a preliminary nod to Questar Pipeline’sapplication to build a 75.6-mile, 272,000 Dth/d pipeline looprunning from northeastern Utah to the north central part of thestate. The proposed facilities would transport to western marketsthe growing coal-seam natural gas production near Price, UT, andthe volumes delivered to Questar from Colorado Interstate Gas’sUinta Basin Lateral at Natural Buttes.

Williams’ Northwest Pipeline has filed a FERC application thatwould allow the company to expand upon a system that is alreadyclassified as one of the nation’s largest natural gas transporters.The filing would allow Northwest to build and operate a newnine-mile, 20-inch diameter lateral pipeline in Snohomish County,WA.

The National Energy Board has put out a new signal that naturalgas supplies will remain tight by cutting in half its growthprojections for western Canadian production capacity after a reviewof recent performance.

The National Energy Board has put out a new signal that naturalgas supplies will remain tight by cutting in half its growthprojections for western Canadian production capacity after a reviewof recent performance.

FERC approved Northern Border Pipeline Co.’s rate settlement,which converts the pipeline’s rate design to straight-fixedvariable from cost of service and which imposes a moratorium onrate changes until Nov. 1, 2005.

As expected, Barrett Resources Corp.’s request for eight waterdischarge permits to operate in the Powder River Basin wereapproved last week by the Wyoming Department of EnvironmentalQuality. But Barrett and other producers operating in the prolificcoalbed methane basin may be holding their breath to see if thepermit approval process slows down following an anticipated statepublic hearing Jan. 3 (see Daily GPI, Nov. 6).

While three top Canadian producers move forward on tappingnatural gas reserves on the Mackenzie Delta and designing apipeline to bring it to market, the first step is being takentowards reopening drilling much farther north. For the first timesince the Prudhoe Bay discovery ignited an exploration rush on thetop of the world in the 1960s and ’70s, the vast Sverdrup Basin inthe Arctic Islands is being offered to gas hunters.