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Fearing the potential side effects of waivers on the interstatemarket, FERC last week decided to give Atlanta Gas Light (AGL) onlya short-term extension of its waivers to Commission regulations topreserve the “status quo” of retail gas unbundling in Georgia whileit explores other non-waiver solutions for utilities.

For a while Thursday it looked like August prices would keeprunning higher based on a strong screen, continued heavy powergeneration load and Wednesday afternoon’s super-bullish storagereport. However, the uptrend crested and began subsiding a bit whena late “meltdown” occurred in September futures, sources said.

Following aggressive buying and double-digit increases achievedin Wednesday’s Access trading session, the futures market cooledoff yesterday as physical traders eschewed the opportunity to belong gas at the $2.70 level for the month of August. Once themarket was unable to get past the $2.72 high from Access sellerscame out of the woodwork and demoted the September contract to$2.569, down 3.7 cent for the session.

FERC has dealt a partial blow to Dynegy Marketing and Trade’scontrol over a portion of its contracted-for capacity on El PasoNatural Gas to California, resulting in a measured victory for thestate’s regulators and San Juan producers. Dynegy enjoyed a triumphof sorts as well, however. The Commission upheld the bulk of itsprior decision approving the whopping El Paso-Dynegy arrangement,finding that while it posed some competitive concerns, it was not”unduly discriminatory” in nature.

FERC has decided to give Atlanta Gas Light (AGL) a short-termextension of waivers to Commission regulations to preserve the”status quo” of natural gas unbundling in the state while itexplores other non-waiver options for utilities.

Activity continues to pour from the Powder River Basin, as CMSContinental Natural Gas, a CMS Energy subsidiary, named OkemahConstruction Inc. as the winning bidder to build the NorthernHeader Gas Gathering System. CMS Continental will be the operatorof the new header, which will help increase the accessibility ofthe basin’s coal bed methane gas to main market points. The costwas not disclosed. CMS said the gathering system will beoperational November 1.

Anadarko Petroleum Corp. is gaining Gulf of Mexico sub-saltexploration rights through an agreement with Texaco Exploration andProduction Inc. Anadarko also just announced significantly improvedsecond quarter results and a nearly 60% boost to its currentcapital spending program.

Two top-10 national energy marketers, Aquila Energy and EngageEnergy, started doing business July 29 in California on EnergyMarketplace, the retail natural gas and electricity Internetshopping center operated by Southern California Gas Co. Decliningto provide dollar or transaction volume statistics on the nearlytwo-year-old site, the nation’s first retail energy Internetshopping site, a SoCalGas spokesperson would only say that thereare other major announcements regarding Energy Marketplace that arepending and should be made in the near future.

Once touted as a quick fix for peak demand in the Northeast,salt cavern storage has stumbled over the problem of what do withthe salt that is removed to make the cavern, which appears to beabout as popular as nuclear waste. At this point one project hasbeen delayed and two others appear to have stalled.