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With FERC continuing its probe into whether energy companies active in western markets utilized dubious trading strategies like those described in recently released Enron Corp. memos, FERC Commissioner William Massey on Thursday said that he wants to make sure that whatever standard electricity market design the Commission ultimately adopts will ensure that strategies like those described in the memos can’t take place.

FERC Commissioner William Massey last Thursday said that he is “very concerned” that a state-by-state approach to transmission siting is not going to produce the results that the Commission needs as it works to foster the development of wholesale power markets in the U.S. and said that at a minimum, the federal agency should have some sort of backstop authority on the siting of power lines.

Intricate tax transactions enabled Enron to inflate its profits by nearly $1 billion between 1995 and 2001, exaggerating the size and scope of its operations, The Washington Post reported Wednesday after obtaining internal company documents from Enron’s former top tax executive.

Rowan Companies Inc., El Paso Oil & Gas Canada Inc. and Canadian Superior Energy Inc. said that they have contracted the Rowan Gorilla V for the initial drilling of El Paso’s and Canadian Superior’s Marquis Natural Gas Project offshore Nova Scotia. In February, Canadian Superior said the Marquis prospect is targeting up to 2 Tcf reserves (see NGI, Feb. 25). The site is located about 100 miles offshore.

It will probably take four to five years of working through the current crisis environment in the energy markets, setting up regional transmission organizations (RTOs) and installing a standard electricity market design before FERC can ratchet down the current levels of regulatory oversight over the industry, FERC Commissioner Linda Breathitt said last Thursday.

This could be the first year since the gas marketing business began more than a decade and a half ago that annual marketing volumes decline, said Benjamin Schlesinger, president of Maryland-based consulting firm Schlesinger and Associates, which has been closely tracking the industry since the early 1980s. Schleslinger said in addition to the likely volume declines this year, the number of gas merchants in the business also will fall sharply.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) kicked off National Hurricane Awareness Week on Monday predicting the 2002 Atlantic hurricane (June 1-Nov. 30) season will likely have normal to slightly above normal levels of activity with nine to 13 tropical storms, six to eight hurricanes and two to three major hurricanes (category 3 or higher on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale ). NOAA officials warned the public not to become complacent following two seasons in which there were no direct hurricane hits on the United States.

A year already marked by accounting problems and revelations of round-trip transactions preceded restatements of 2001 income last week by Reliant Energy Inc. and subsidiary Reliant Resources Inc. However, management warned that it is still reviewing other data on the phony deals, and ultimately plan to restate revenue, fuel and cost of natural gas and purchased power expenses for 1999, 2000 and 2001.

Although there have been few if any formal announcements about increases in exploration and capital spending, there has been a huge increase in the rig count since it bottomed out a little more than a month ago, indicating producers probably aren’t waiting around to take advantage of a favorable 12-month gas futures strip, Raymond James & Associates said in an equity research note.