NGI The Weekly Gas Market Report

Even with the ink still not dry and final allocation still undetermined on California’s record $5 billion electricity rate increase approved last Tuesday, state officials are already worried that the added revenues and state-backed bonds that will follow will not be enough to pay for power over the next 12 to 18 months.

With North American natural gas supply remaining stagnant at about 71 Bcf/d over the last five years, and an estimated 109 Bcf/d of supply expected to be necessary by 2015, El Paso Chairman William A. Wise says the time for liquefied natural gas (LNG) has come.

With questions continuing to arise about electric reliability in New York City this summer, the New York Public Service Commission (NYPSC) is actively seeking remedies to ensure the lights stay on. The commission approved several electric “demand response” programs to be implemented by Consolidated Edison Co. of New York that are designed to reduce demand for electricity during peak periods.

As predicted by National Energy Board (NEB) member Jean-Paul Theoret in a winter speech to a Quebec lawyers’ conference, the first results of unleashing competition in the formerly stable Canadian natural gas pipeline community are “messy markets” and potentially “messy outcomes.” That became clear in one of the first tests of the NEB’s declared intentions to encourage growth of a true market in transportation services by making flexibility and adaptability the watchwords for a new era of light-handed regulation.

Compression upgrades on parts of the Southern California Gas Co. pipeline infrastructure along with using cushion gas from several storage fields, including SoCal’s idle Montebello field, may be the last and best hope of avoiding a meltdown in California’s natural gas transmission pipeline infrastructure this summer under the weight of heavy demand from electric generators, a state energy expert told California legislators last Wednesday.

A policy change directed at construction funding on newly formed, project-financed pipelines, which showed up for the first time in FERC’s certificate order for Gulfstream Natural Gas System, “constitutes flawed policy and lacks reasoned decision-making,” the pipeline said (see NGI, Feb. 26).

Uniform electricity markets across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions moved one step closer to becoming reality last week as electricity market administrators, Independent System Operator (ISO) New England Inc. and PJM Interconnection LLC, reported that they have teamed up with systems developer ALSTOM ESCA Corp. to formalize an agreement that will standardize their electricity markets. The ISOs also believe the model could be adopted by wholesale markets across the country.

Independent Vintage Petroleum Inc., based in Tulsa, has entered into an agreement to acquire Canadian-based Genesis Exploration Ltd., offering C$18.25 per share in cash. The boards of both companies have unanimously agreed to the offer, which puts total consideration, including assumption of Genesis’ estimated debt, at C$898 million (US$572 million).

Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-AK) last week called on Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham to provide the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee with a comprehensive inventory of all possible energy sources to head off the worsening power shortages that are anticipated for California and other western markets this summer.