Utility News

The New York Times:

After struggling with soaring heating costs through the winter, millions of Americans are behind on electric and gas bills, and a record number of families could face energy shut-offs over the next two months, according to state energy officials and utilities around the country.

The escalating costs of heating oil, propane and kerosene, most commonly used in the Northeast, have posed the greatest burdens, officials say, but natural gas and electricity prices have also climbed at a time when low-end incomes are stagnant and prices have also jumped for food and gasoline.

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Wall Street Journal (subscription):

As utilities abandon plans to build coal-fired power plants, a big bet Sempra Energy has made on natural gas is turning out to be timely.

Sempra has been pouring money into natural-gas infrastructure. The big San Diego energy company is spending $2 billion on construction of the first liquefied-natural-gas receipt terminal on the West Coast and another in Louisiana. It has budgeted $1.2 billion for a 25% stake in a new gas pipeline — the Rockies Express — stretching from Colorado to Ohio, and $200 million for more gas storage in Louisiana.

“Sempra’s been investing in all the right areas,” says Faisal Khan, utilities analyst for Citigroup in New York.

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The New York Times:

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved a $700 million liquefied natural gas terminal on Thursday for Long Island Sound, but the project faces opposition on environmental grounds and the possibility of a catastrophe should the terminal become the target of a terrorist attack.

New York officials have yet to decide whether to issue permits for the project, and Connecticut officials have warned that they will fight it to the United States Supreme Court.

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Wall Street Journal (subscription):

Natural-gas prices are near two-year highs and outpacing price increases for oil, driving up costs for companies and consumers.

But many market watchers predict a fall in coming months, as new supplies come to market following years of flat production.

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Canadian Business News:

PPL Corp. said Thursday it has agreed to sell two natural-gas distribution and propane subsidiaries to UGI Corp. for about $268 million in cash and working capital.

The energy and utility holding company expects to close its sale of PPL Gas Utilities Corp. and Penn Fuel Propane LLC before the end of 2008.

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The New York Times:

Stymied in their plans to build coal-burning power plants, American utilities are turning to natural gas to meet expected growth in demand, risking a new upward spiral in the price of that fuel.

Utility executives say they have little choice. With opposition to coal plants rising across the country — including a statement by three investment banks Monday saying they are wary of financing new ones — the executives see plants fired by natural gas as the only kind that can be constructed quickly and can supply reliable power day and night.

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The Wall Street Journal (subscription):

California policy makers have set the most ambitious conservation targets in the U.S. The state’s three major investor-owned electric utilities were told last summer to reduce their combined energy use by the equivalent of three power plants to earn big bonuses — or face the possibility of big penalties if they fail.

Utilities across the country are watching for the results. About half of U.S. energy use flows through the nation’s utilities, and a powerful combination of rising fuel costs and climate-change fears is putting increasing pressure on them to find ways to reduce the demand. Coal plants are causing environmental concerns, natural gas is subject to huge price swings, nuclear plants remain controversial and even wind farms are proving hard to site without opposition. So producing less energy has new appeal for utilities’ bottom lines.

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USA Today:

Duke Energy, the Charlotte-based utility, is now awaiting an air permit from Indiana for a $2 billion, 630-megawatt coal plant, large enough to power about 200,000 homes a year. Considered only average-size as traditional plants go, it would become the world’s largest coal-fired power plant to use a new, cleaner technology called integrated gasification combined cycle, or IGCC.

“It’s a technology that has the ability to take air pollution out of the debate over coal,” says John Thompson, director of the Coal Transition Program at the Clean Air Task Force, a Boston-based environmental group that supports the plant. “The day that plant opens, the 500 or so coal plants in the U.S. are obsolete.”

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MarketWatch:

Exxon Mobil Corp. said Tuesday it plans to seek regulatory approval for a floating liquefied natural gas receiving terminal to be anchored about 20 miles off the coast of New Jersey. Exxon Mobil said the $1 billion BlueOcean Energy terminal will have the capacity to supply about 1.2 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day, enough for more than five million residential consumers in New York and New Jersey.

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The New York Times:

If litigation is war by other means, then the Supreme Court case of New Jersey v. Delaware is nothing less than civil war — the latest battle in a dispute over the two states’ Delaware River boundary, which has flared up periodically for well over a century.

Earlier Supreme Court face-offs involved the two states fighting over fishing rights and oyster beds. The case that was argued Tuesday morning has a more modern focus: a huge liquefied natural gas storage and processing plant that BP wants to build on New Jersey’s Delaware River shore in Logan Township.

New Jersey wants the $600 million plant and the economic boost that its construction and operation would bring. Delaware declared in 2005 that the project would violate its Coastal Zone Act and refused to issue a permit.

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