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.

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 ...

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.

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.

FERC At 25

A leaner bureaucracy sharpens its market-monitoring tools.

FERC turns 25 this year. With Enron’s collapse and California’s unraveled electric restructuring scheme, the silver anniversary reminiscing may be slightly muted.

Enron C&I Customers Paying Twice

Public Utilities Fortnightly and POWERdat®

Some large commercial and industrial customers who had signed energy contracts with the now-bankrupt Enron are forced to pay their utility bills a second time. "We're looking at these bills and saying, 'Hold on a minute,'" said one corporate energy manager.

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.

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.