NGI The Weekly Gas Market Report

Tengasco Inc. shares were down 11% last Tuesday but rebounded 9% on Wednesday by noon to $1.31 after the company discounted a class action lawsuit brought against it on Monday. Tengasco said the lawsuit was initiated by common stock short-sellers, who profit when share prices decline.

Ontario Premier Ernie Eves’ controversial plan to cap electricity prices paid by residential and small business consumers at C4.3 cents through 2006 moved one step closer to becoming a reality last week after the province’s energy minister introduced a bill implementing the proposal.

The Connecticut Attorney General’s Office has called on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to grant a stay of an order approving the proposed Connecticut-to-New York Islander East Pipeline project, which seeks to deliver natural gas to the expanding Long Island, NY, market.

KeySpan Corp. last Tuesday said that the company made an error in calculating the Long Island Power Authority’s (LIPA) electric system requirements from newly installed peaking units, leading to a systems requirement overestimate of approximately $55 million to $65 million.

Duke Energy Corp.’s board of directors has elected Fred J. Fowler as president and chief operating officer, reporting directly to Chairman and CEO Richard B. Priory, the company announced last Monday. Fowler had been the company’s group president for energy transmission since 1997, where he oversaw Duke Energy’s interstate natural gas pipelines and Duke Energy Field Services. In the “new executive role,” Fowler will be responsible for the operations of Duke Energy’s energy businesses, including Duke Power Co., Duke Energy Gas Transmission, Duke Energy Field Services, Duke Energy International, Duke Energy Trading and Marketing and Duke/Fluor Daniel, according to the Charlotte, NC-based energy company. Fowler, a veteran of the energy business for nearly 35 years, has worked at Panhandle Trading Corp., been president of Trunkline Gas Co., president of Texas Eastern Transmission Corp. and group vice president of PanEnergy Corp. Duke Energy was created in 1997 as a result of the merger of PanEnergy and Duke Power. He currently serves as chairman of the board for the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, which represents interstate gas pipelines, and serves on the board of Texas Eastern Products Pipeline Co.

Energy trading companies should leap into action with “an aggressive compliance program in-house,” including a regimen of standards and procedures to weed out unacceptable market behavior, a veteran attorney in the regulatory arena told the mid-year meeting of the Energy Bar Association.

A former executive who worked for infamous Enron Corp. CFO Andrew Fastow agreed to cooperate with the Enron Task Force on Tuesday, part of a plea bargain reached for his guilty plea for tax evasion.

Now that ISO New England and the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) have dropped their plans to create a Northeast regional transmission organization (RTO), the two regions will compete directly “for the few investment dollars left on the table,” Energy Security Analysis Inc. (ESAI) concludes in a research memo issued this week.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last week put the brakes on an index-based transportation contract that Transwestern Pipeline negotiated with Dynegy Marketing and Trade, saying the agreement flies in the face of a mid-July order suspending the Enron-affiliated pipeline’s authority to do such deals for an entire year.