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Consolidated Edison announced it plans to sell two-thirds (5,500MW) of its New York City electric generation plants in an auctionstarting this summer. Its plants will be divided into threebundles. Each bundle will include a major generating facility-theRavenswood Generating Station in Long Island City, the AstoriaGenerating Station in Astoria, or the Arthur Kill Station on StatenIsland-and gas turbine generating facilities in Queens andBrooklyn. The company plans to sell two of the bundles throughauction and retain the remaining bundle, which has not yet beenidentified. It expects to receive authorization from the New YorkState Public Service Commission (PSC) by July 1. The auctionprocess would begin later that month, with the winning bidders tobe announced in January 1999.

KN’s Bushton Plant will have a Lean Side Outage through March 5.Only the Lean Side Processing capabilities will be affected.

Cash prices came out of the chute fast Monday morning as coldertemperatures, strong NYMEX prices and a bit of hype tricked mostmarkets into early gains. “A buyer blinked early this morning andsellers took control,” a Tulsa marketer said. The early strengthpushed prices to 5-8 cents above index levels in some cases.However, after the market caught its breath, sellers came out ofthe woodwork to send prices lower and late trades were back nearindex levels. Western prices followed the East’s early lead butresisted the major downturn.

The April Nymex contract fell 2.9 cents to $2.292 on Monday,following the spot month’s failed attempt to clear a majorresistance level. “April was in a two hurdle race today, but ittripped on the second hurdle,” a trader told GPI. “On the one hand,April was able to break out of the symmetrical triangle formationby moving above $2.34. However, April immediately fell back once itfilled in the chart gap at $2.355. There were quite a few standingsell orders at that price, so it’s no wonder the contract fellback,” he said.

El Paso Energy CEO William A. Wise calls his company’s latestplanned acquisition the “yellow brick road” to deep-water Gulf ofMexico gas development. El Paso said it will buy DeepTechInternational’s interests in Leviathan Gas Pipeline through aseries of transactions worth about $450 million. Leviathan GasPipeline Partners produces, processes, gathers, transports andmarkets oil and gas in the offshore Gulf of Mexico.

The next challenge to the troubled Canadian natural gas pipelineestablishment opens May 25, when the National Energy Board hasscheduled the start for hearings on AEC Suffield Gas Pipeline.

A recommended state approval of the proposed $5 billion mergerbetween Los Angeles-based Pacific Enterprises and neighboring SanDiego-based Enova Corp. is drawing qualified praise from the twoutility holding companies that want to combine into a new entitynamed Sempra Energy. However, they will be asking the CaliforniaPublic Utilities Commission to allow more time to capture greatersavings from the corporate marriage, which will create the largestaggregation of energy customers in the nation-more than 6 million(4.7 million for Southern California Gas and 1.3 million at SanDiego Gas and Electric). CPUC action could come at its March 26meeting.

Tennessee Gas Pipeline’s Express 500 Project, which offers firmtransportation through the bottlenecked Gulf of Mexico supply area,won more than 1 Bcf/d of capacity requests from customers duringthe project’s first open season. “We believe that this level ofparticipation demonstrates the need for incremental capacity fromthe Gulf Coast,” said Tennessee President John Somerhalder II.

Natural gas producers scored a big victory last week when theFederal Energy Regulatory Commission opened the door for them topost surety bonds in lieu of the multi-million-dollar refunds tocustomers that are due to be paid by March 9th.