NGI The Weekly Gas Market Report

Coral Energy’s growing e-business website, coralconnect.com, will useWeathermarkets.com to give its 2,000-plus current users specializedenergy weather information. The newest addition to the site will offerNorth American forecast graphics for heating and cooling degree days,current and forecast surface conditions and winter weather, as well asEuropean degree days, Scandinavian temperature and precipitationinformation and worldwide sea conditions.

Natural Gas Pipeline Company of America (NGPL) is seeking agreen light to sell off 110 miles of offshore supply laterals andcertain abandoned, retired facilities in the Gulf of Mexico toGreen Canyon Pipe Line Co. LLC for an estimated $1.3 million.

PG&E Corp. is the latest energy giant to seek a toehold inthe fast-growing Arizona merchant power plant market, gaining aninitial state approval last week, but facing up to a half-dozencounty, state and federal environmental reviews for a proposed $500million, 1,040 MW natural gas-fired plant near Phoenix.

Florida Gas Transmission (FGT) has advised FERC that marketersEnron North America Corp. and Dynegy Marketing and Trade havedropped out of its Phase V expansion project in the wake of aFlorida Supreme Court decision in April that dealt a serious blowto the development of merchant power in the state.

With the pressure of an exhaustive state regulatory review andscrutiny of its neighbors, San Jose, CA-based Calpine Corp. says itis prepared to spend whatever it takes to make a 600 MW naturalgas-fired merchant power plant in its headquarters city a “model”for efficiency and environmental cleanliness among its growingfleet of gas-fired power plants nationally.

Houston-based Kinder Morgan Inc. has agreed to sell three naturalgas gathering systems for nearly $21 million to WBI Holdings Inc., thenatural gas pipeline unit of MDU Resources Group Inc. The gatheringsystems in Montana, Colorado, Kansas and Nebraska include operationsthat were discontinued for divestiture last September as part ofKinder’s “back to basics” restructuring program (see NGI, Sept. 20, 1999).

Alliant Energy Resources Inc. announced plans last week topartner with Corn Products International Inc., a major cornrefiner, to build a 750 MW “co-generation” facility near Chicago,IL. The plant, which will be called Argo Power LLC, will produceenough electricity to serve 225,000 average homes when completed inthree years.

Columbia Energy Group’s subsidiary Cove Point LNG Ltd.partnership said Friday it had completed its open season for firmLNG tanker discharging service at its terminal on the Marylandcoast.

The Supreme Court last week refused to review a case in whichKansas gas producers could wind up paying millions of dollars incustomer refunds for selling gas in the 1980s at prices that,because they incorporated the state’s ad valorem tax, may have beenabove the allowed legal limit.