The Aftermath of Alliance
What can we learn from its failure?
What does its downfall mean for the industry?
Law & Lawyers
100-to-1 Odds
Why merchant transmission still looks iffy.
The other week, courtesy of Infocast and its Transmission Summit 2002, held in Washington, D.C. in late January, I got to see, hear, and ask questions of three emerging stars of the merchant transmission biz.
Letter to the Editor
A response to "Frontlines," Feb. 1, 2002.
Kudos to you for your well‑developed editorial pointing out that the administration's announcement is not quite half baked, and that utilities are key to the implementation of a hydrogen fueled transportation initiative.
People (March 1, 2002)
Robert Foss was named VP of gas operations for Atlanta Gas Light Company. American Electric Power named Thomas J. Kalb managing director, project finance—wholesale. Avista Advantage, an affiliate of Avista Corp., announced two executive changes. And others ...
The Golden Age: How Long Will It Last?
Gas execs trust 30 Tcf market remains in the pipeline.
Natural gas industry officials hope they'll be able to look back at 2001 and view the year's series of sideshows as only minor setbacks to their goal of raising the industry's stature and further improving the efficiency of the gas business. Although the industry continues to feel aftershocks from California's electric market restructuring failure and Enron's collapse, many signs point to a relatively painless rebound for a business that has grown increasingly competitive since the mid‑1980s.
Pacific Northwest Gas Utility Blazes New Path
Richard Reiten, Chairman and CEO of Northwest Natural Gas
How has the gas utility industry changed during your tenure as head of Northwest Natural?
The trends are clear. When I arrived six years ago, we as a company benchmarked 34 gas distribution utilities as comparable companies in most respects to Northwest Natural Gas. Today, we're benchmarking only 14. The convergence issues of gas and electric are important. That's a real issue of how to manage the clear trend toward combination companies.
Unbundling Compels Chicago‑bound Pipe to Break the Mold
Deb Macdonald, President of Kinder Morgan's Natural Gas Pipeline of America
NGPL focused almost exclusively on the Chicago marketplace where our major LDC customers were. Obviously, the industry has changed substantially and your customer mix needs to change substantially as the industry changes.
Olympics Index
Utilities and the Games.
10,000-Number of cubic feet of gas consumed each hour by the Olympic flame cauldron at the University of Utah's Rice‑Eccles Stadium during the 2002 Salt Lake City winter Olympic games. -Source: Questar Gas
77 million-Number of cubic feet of gas consumed by fleet of natural gas vehicles used during the 1996 Atlanta summer Olympics. American Gas Association Clean Air Team member companies donated the gas and a portion of the fleet of vehicles to the Atlanta games. -Source: American Gas Association
The SAGA of Yucca Mountain
Is an NRC license application around the corner?
Less than a year after the Bush administration offered the nuclear industry several words of encouragement in its national energy policy plan, the industry won a second opportunity to smile when Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham in January formally embraced Nevada's Yucca Mountain, about 80 miles from Las Vegas, as the underground repository for thousands of tons of high‑level nuclear waste from across the country.
The Crystal Ball: Forecasting for Demand Trading
As demand trading operations expand, accurate short‑term load forecasts will become crucial to marketplace success.
As market forces increasingly enter electricity markets, demand trading has become more prevalent over the last few years in the United States. The differences between high wholesale market prices for electricity and prices paid by retail customers have created significant economic opportunities. The immediate beneficiaries include sellers of electricity with access to the wholesale market and large electricity customers with a desire-and the ability-to reduce demand.