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Law & Lawyers

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.

Byline: 

Mark Hand

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Patience Breeds Profits for Gas‑Centric Utility

Robert Best, Chairman, President and CEO of Atmos Energy

Will Atmos remain a gas‑only utility company?

You never say never. Our strategy to date has been to stick with natural gas. We serve a lot of small and medium‑size communities in our eleven states. We haven't taken on more than we can deal with. We started in 1983 with 300,000 customers in West Texas and when we complete the Mississippi Valley acquisition, we'll be 1.7 million customers.

Byline: 

Mark Hand

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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.

Byline: 

Mark Hand

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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.
Byline: 

Paul B. Scott

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People (March 15, 2002)

E2I appointed Richard H. Counihan as vice president of research programs. The MAPP management committee elected its executive committee members. The Energy Distribution Group of NiSource Inc., recently announced a management realignment. And others ...
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The Commission: The Market's Eye-in-the-Sky?

FERC's plan to expand into energy market-monitoring faces many challenges.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is positioning itself to be the preeminent energy market cop. The commission will have many challenges before it becomes successful in policing market abusers.
Byline: 

David O. Jermain

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So, You Want to be a Retail Energy Marketer?

Retail energy markets entail a unique set of risk management challenges.

As the march of retail competition, although slower, continues to move on the country, energy companies are finding they must be much more agile at managing the risks. A discussion of what energy suppliers ought to know.
Byline: 

David A. Foti and Martin F. Nellius III

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Let's Be Rational About Hydrogen as a Vehicular Fuel

A response to “Forgetting Someone, Mr. Secretary?” Frontlines, Feb 1, 2002.

Mr. Stavros seems to fall into the same trap as so many of the major car manufacturers in assuming the need for a prohibitively costly infrastructure to supply this hydrogen when one already exists that offers by far the cheapest and environmentally vastly superior option—the natural gas transmission and distribution system.
Byline: 

Henry R. Linden

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