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Nevada’s governor last week delayed opening the state’selectricity market until no later than Sept. 1, 2001, choosing toestablish a bipartisan statewide committee to develop a new energypolicy for the state.

Mountain Energy Corp., a gas marketer in Kansas City, MO, saidlast week it has had to ask about 10% of its customers to converttheir fixed-priced supply contracts to index-based arrangements forthe remainder of their contract terms due to a “major dispute” withAnadarko Energy Services over the “hedging of our accounts.”

AGL Resources Inc. has closed on its $533 million acquisition ofVirginia Natural Gas, more than two months ahead of schedule andprior to the start of the winter heating season.

Consolidation hasn’t stopped and, in fact, will play a big rolein the future for both large and small players in the oil and gasindustry, said David Moore, a strategic practices consultant forAndersen Consulting.

Austin, TX-based Green Mountain Energy has received aninvestment of $53.5 million to fund its growth in marketing cleanerenergy sources in deregulated markets in the United States. Oddlyenough, the investment will come overseas from Nuon, the largestutility in the Netherlands and a leading provider of green energyin Europe.

Four stakeholders committees, set up last March by the PublicService Commission (PSC), have now identified the issues in thestate of New York’s stalled retail deregulation process forelectric power and natural gas, and by next spring they expect tohave some solutions — if it isn’t too late.

In the wake of a summer-long lamenting of the dysfunction, ifnot outright death, of California’s attempt at creating competitiveretail electricity markets, the state’s small remaining band ofnonutility retailers, or “energy service providers” (ESPs), isweighing in with state officials and utilities trying to breathenew life into the state’s once-optimistic drive for moremarket-based energy solutions.

True Quote announced an alliance with Cap Gemini Ernst &Young to provide customers with information technology consulting,as well as system and business integration services. In addition,the companies intend to license truequote.com’s advanced tradingplatform to the global marketplace, including turnkey solutions forother exchanges desiring real-time bid-ask systems. These serviceswill be provided to clients under the “TQ Trade Solutions” brandname. “This alliance will expedite the deployment of integratedsolutions beyond the box, allowing us to provide powerful and cost-effective products to our customers,” said True Quote President andCEO Dennis Crum. True Quote develops and operates independentelectronic energy trading platforms and portals. These systemsprovide virtual trading communities for market participants tocommunicate and transact in an efficient, real-time environment.The truequote.com application architecture is devoted to anopen-access, broker-assisted model that allows equal access to allqualified market participants. Currently, PG&E National EnergyGroup, APB Energy, Inc., Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, EnFORMTechnology LLC and Microsoft Corp. are the principal companiesworking together to develop and promote truequote.com. Thetechnology has been developed using the latest distributedapplication design and development principles, as outlined inMicrosoft’s Distributed Internet Application Architecture (WindowsDNA). For more information visit the company’s website atwww.truequote.com or call Lee Ann Zoeller at (800) 327-1499.

The cash market was a mix of ups and downs as far as priceaverages went Thursday, but sources agreed that the overall trendwas downward as trading proceeded through the morning. Flat quotesdominated again at many points, while sizeable gains and losseswere scattered.