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Buoyed by renewed storm fears and bargain buying followingThursday’s 6% price slide, natural gas futures were higher Friday,leaving traders to speculate as to whether the downward pricecorrection is complete. November received the largest boost of anymonth, recovering 6.2 cents to close at $5.186. The winter strip,followed suit, gaining a nickel to close at $5.105.

Recognizing that energy consumers are likely to experience priceshocks for natural gas, electricity and heating oil this winter,Senate and House lawmakers last week began calling on Congress andthe Clinton administration to work cooperatively to open up morepublic lands to exploration and drilling, provide tax incentivesfor producers (especially marginal well operators) and to consideroptions that would make a broader mix of fuels (other than naturalgas) attractive to the electric generation market.

The Pennsylvania Office of Consumer Advocate (OCA) announced that Titan Energy, which was purchased by AES Power Direct, LLC for $6 million in cash at the end of July, will be returning an estimated $281,000 in uncashed deposit checks to approximately 6,300 of its Pennsylvania customers in the Columbia Gas and Peoples Natural Gas service territories (see NGI, July 31).

Despite the huge post expiration-day futures correction lastThursday, prices rebounded some Friday and for good reason,according to Salomon Smith Barney energy analyst Robert Morris.

The Democrats barely mentioned the word “energy” in theirplatform at the August convention, but President Clinton put thespotlight on energy issues last week in Washington with hisdecision to release 30 million barrels of crude oil from theStrategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), as well as a record $400 millionof funding for energy assistance to low-income households for thiswinter.

What do you get when you mix coconut oil and liquefied naturalgas? A minus-260-degrees-Fahrenheit Pina Colada.

In simplest terms, the two men leading the charge to become thenext president of the United States view the energy issue inopposite ways. Republican candidate George W. Bush sees the glassas half empty, and wants to replenish it with new supplies.Democratic challenger Al Gore sees the glass as half full, andwants to conserve and re-use it as much as possible.

Altra Energy Technologies has teamed up with Epicentric Inc., aprovider of e-commerce portals, to form a new subsidiary that willsupply an “end-to-end e-business solution” that enables energycompanies to create their own privately branded portals. Thejointly owned Altra E-Business Solutions’ first offering will be awholesale energy trading portal, which integrates every tradingelement into a single personalized browser.

The Gas Industry Standards board (GISB) has offered up a plan for a combined natural gas and electric industry standards board for discussion among GISB’s own members and electric industry representatives.