Niagara Mohawk Power

To help gas customers take advantage of unbundled services, the New York Public Service Commission has authorized National Fuel Gas Distribution Corp. to modify its existing firm transportation service procedures to allow marketers to gain access to a share of utility storage capacity, for use in delivering the required volume of gas to the city gate.

In another ruling, the commission approved a similar, but less innovative storage proposal for firm transportation customers served by Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp.

Six out of eight members of the New York Power Pool have asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to approve a request to provide electricity, installed capacity and ancillary services at market-based rates in the state's restructured market.

Included in the Aug. 15 filing are market power analyses for individual members and a plan for monitoring the proposed New York ISO. According to the utilities, the analyses demonstrate that the market under the proposed industry structure will be workably competitive. They also support the market-based rate proposal.

As marketers discover, some LDCs keep a strong grip on the residential class.

Michael Meath of Agway Energy Products has a dream. A dream to tap the 4.5 million natural gas customers in New York State, supplying commodity and then, other services.

New York state unbundled gas rates in March 1996, with new tariffs approved later that year. Since then, just 11,000 customers out of 4.5 million (em less than half a percent (em have decided to use aggregated transportation service.

Not all New York utilities have filed customer aggregation programs, however.

The New York Public Service Commission has authorized Niagara Mohawk Power Corp., to set up an emissions reduction credit pool to assist economic development efforts in the state.

It also approved the utility's plan to fund the pool with more than $700,000 of existing deferred credits owed to ratepayers from previous sales of sulfur-dioxide allowances.

The company plans to sell the credits at market value and as part of special discount electric service tariff offerings.

In aiming to make financial statements more meaningful, will FASB instead make them indecipherable?

By mid-summer, a total of 123 companies had cranked out some 574 pages of comments, detailing exactly what they thought of the accounting rules proposed by the Financial Accounting Standards Board to cover the closure or removal of certain long-lived assets. %n1%n The FASB's"Exposure Draft," issued early last year, had requested comments on eight issues. The respondents answered as requested, but also raised a host of new questions.

Canadian markets beckon U.S. utilities, and vice versa, demanding greater access to transmission lines to bridge the gap.

When I took the job of president of Niagara Mohawk Power Corp., way up North, near the Canadian border, I shared the news with a close friend. I told him how excited I was to be joining an innovative team that was out in front, breaking new ground in the competitive arenas rapidly evolving in the electric power industry.

The overwhelming impression is one of growth (em in volume and in the number of participants.

The early 1990s was an anxious period for advocates of emissions trading. Concerns about whether the sulfur dioxide allowance market would ever develop tempered the heady success of the first national emissions trading program implemented by the Environmental Protection Agency under the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, Title IV. These concerns were heightened when in May 1992, Wisconsin Power & Light traded 10,000 allowances to the Tennessee Valley Authority.

I read with interest your editorial regarding securitization in the April 15 edition of PUBLIC UTILITIES FORTNIGHTLY. As the chairman of the New York State Standing Committee on Energy & Telecommunications, I must take issue with your inclusion of statements from opponents to such legislation without providing its sponsors with the opportunity to press their case.

The Senate, on March 19, 1997, passed legislation that I sponsored at the request of Gov. George E.

By unbundling usage from access, utilities can maximize contribution to margin and yet still retain load.

With deregulation and industry restructuring, energy utilities face price competition from marketers, brokers, independent producers and even other utilities. To succeed in this environment, utilities will need to develop innovative pricing strategies that better meet customer needs and respond more effectively to competition. The common response by utilities to competition calls for price discounting to retain "at risk"

customers by meeting the competition head-on.

Do mergers and "critical mass" really make a difference? The answer, it seems, is yes.

To become more competitive, U.S. electric utilities have embarked on a quest in recent years to improve operational efficiency and factor productivity. The question is: Are utilities making progress? And, which companies have gained a competitive edge? Which have not?

Industry analysts have long argued that given the structure of the markets they serve and their cost-based, rate-setting procedures, electric utilities tend toward monopolistic behavior.