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The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities announced last weekthat it would require interruptible natural gas customers tomaintain a seven-day supply of alternative fuels on site, orthrough a firm contractual arrangement. The action will help tomake energy prices in New Jersey a little less volatile going intothe heating season, the BPU said.

Advancing its reputation as one of the more innovative pipelinesin the industry when it comes to ratemaking, Reliant Energy GasTransmission (REGT) submitted a rate filing with FERC that willgive customers an ‘in-kind’ balancing option. The plan is part ofto its Automatic Nomination Service (ANS), a ‘just-in-time’ supplymanagement service.

California’s State Auditor General formally began contacting the state’s nonprofit electric grid operator (Cal-ISO) and wholesale spot power market (Cal-PX) Wednesday in a state legislature-ordered investigation that could lead to the merger of the two entities. The state’s electricity price spikes and supply shortfall this summer prompted legislative action in August ordering the probe.

“Justice has been delayed far too long,” producer/shippers saidin petitioning FERC last week for expedited resolution of theircomplaint against “El Paso’s unjust and unreasonable pro ratacapacity allocation and scheduling procedures.”

Florida Power & Light is having to do a delicate balancingact to minimize the impact of high gas and oil prices onresidential customers.

Just so you’ll know: “The natural gas market is a real successstory…..FERC has gotten an enormous amount of things right. Themarket may not be unblemished, but there are lots who consider thenatural gas market the best market in the world offering genuineprice discovery on a daily basis across dozens of products. It’ssomething everyone should be proud of,” Robert Levin of the NewYork Mercantile Exchange told a FERC conference last week.

Although the focus of last week’s “summit” in Ohio was spiraling winter gas prices, Enron Chairman and CEO Kenneth L. Lay used the opportunity to take a few shots at deregulation in the electric industry in general, and the California market specifically.

Sempra Energy Chairman and CEO Stephen Baum has called on stateregulators to award electric generation greater priority in theinterruptible queue so its gas supply won’t be among the first tobe cut during extreme cold-spells and in emergency situations.

In the midst of this week’s power alerts exacerbated byCalifornia’s shortage of electric generating capacity, theSacramento Municipal Utility District drew only three responses toa proposal put out for bids early in the summer to have a developerbuild, own and operate a natural gas-fired 500 to 1,000 MWgeneration plant on part of a 2,000-acre site owned by the nation’slargest municipal utility. The earliest the plant would beoperational would be in 2004.