News Digest

Gas Executives' Forum

 

They see leasing and dark fiber as "no-risk" ventures, with more upside potential.

Few seem ready to predict when demand might wane for rights-of-way for long-haul telecommunications. The consensus suggests a long-lived market - with interstate natural gas pipelines primed to take advantage. The question seems not so much whether to dive in, but how deeply to get involved.

Should pipelines stick to leasing rights-of-way to carriers? Or should they lay fiber and perhaps offer their own long-haul services?

Subsidiaries grapple with codes of conduct. Did regulators overreact?

PG&E Corp. has threatened to appeal - all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if need be - a $1.68 million California Public Utilities Commission fine, slapped on it for violating affiliate rules.

The fine marked the loudest shot to date in what appears to be part two in the electric and gas restructuring wars:

The Affiliate Rules Wars.

These skirmishes promise to pit independent power marketers and out-of-state utility affiliates against the affiliates of incumbents.

ENERGY SERVICE PROVIDERS ARE LISTED BY THE DOZENS on public utility commission Web sites, often with direct links to the companies themselves. Even so, picking out 10 to watch for their commercial and industrial activity isn't an easy task.

There's no reliable volume data. There's no organization rating the services each of these vendors offers. The ESPs themselves are either reticent about disclosing data or overly boastful. There's no ready apples-to-apples comparison of ESPs available for prospective C&I customers. Still, who is who among ESPs is a legitimate question.