NGI The Weekly Gas Market Report

Duke Energy said Friday it is discontinuing proprietary trading at its North American merchant energy businesses, Duke Energy North America (DENA) and Duke Energy Merchants, to focus on more profitable businesses.

Continuing on with its 2003 exploration and production strategy despite a few recent company speed-bumps, Anadarko Petroleum Corp. announced a natural gas discovery at its Jubilee prospect in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico. The Atwater Valley 349 No. 1 well is the first well drilled in Anadarko’s Eastern Gulf of Mexico exploration program.

In a proposal that the author concedes could be made moot by federal regulatory action this summer, the California state Senate’s energy committee Tuesday passed to another standing committee a proposal to set new limits and criteria for energy price indices used by state regulators in setting rates for qualifying facility (QF) power producers and others.

Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) last Wednesday said that he is hopeful that electricity titles included in comprehensive energy bills pending in the House of Representatives and the Senate can be successfully reconciled when conferees from the two chambers meet to iron out differences between the two sweeping legislative proposals.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last week voted out a rule updating its requirements for regulated companies to record and report liabilities and other costs associated with the retirement or decommissioning of plant assets.

Spokespeople for both sides confirmed that a lawsuit brought by California’s lieutenant governor in a state Superior Court in Los Angeles quietly late last month dropped McGraw-Hill and its two industry publications from the legal action against trading companies that alleges widespread wholesale natural gas market manipulation.

FERC last Wednesday turned aside requests for rehearing filed by various California parties related to the Commission’s approval earlier this year of a settlement reached between Reliant Resources Inc. and FERC staff under which the generator agreed to pay $13.8 million for withholding electricity from the state’s market on two days in June 2000.

Responding to pleas for either a deferral or stay of systemwide contract conversion on its pipeline, El Paso Natural Gas said last week that “for the record” it is prepared to switch full requirements (FR) service to contract demand (CD) service by the FERC-ordered deadline of May 1, and under the terms outlined by the agency last September.

A Houston judge has frozen the assets of former executives with Rocky Mountain Energy Corp. (RMEC) after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) alleged the company had illegally worked to manipulate its stock price. The SEC accused RMEC, its former CEO John Ehrman and former general counsel Roderick Johnson of an ongoing “pump and dump” scheme to raise the stock price, according to the complaint.