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.

Beware of the eternal doomsayer who persists in warning we're going to run out of oil or gas sometime in our children or grandchildren's lifetimes. That's the advice from members of the exploration and production community who've seen firsthand the power of technology in finding and producing reserves.

Finding that "market design flaws are visible in every regional electric market today," FERC released its working paper on standardized transmission service and wholesale electric design on March 15. The work in progress outlines key principles and policy decisions on standard market design (SMD) to guide FERC in developing a revised open access transmission tariff (OATT).