On a bookshelf behind my desk I've stacked up a few older issues of PUBLIC UTILITIES FORTNIGHTLY. Some of them go back more than a half-century. Every so often I pull down a copy to see if I can learn anything from history.
Yes, the advertisements appear quaint (Royal typewriters; IBM punch-card machines; Ditto-brand duplicators). But some of the ideas still have legs, with lively quotations from the likes of Louis Brandeis, Harold Ickes, Walter Lippmann, and Fiorello La Guardia.
Competition from Order 636 has gas customers rethinking their firm capacity options.
Just when everyone thought we had put Order 636 behind us, up pops perhaps our greatest challenge yet: the turnback (or "decontracting") of firm capacity on interstate natural gas pipelines. This phenomenon, now emerging on a few major pipelines, such as Transwestern, El Paso, and Natural Gas Pipeline Co. of America, inspires different reactions.
LDC Robustus? Which Would You Rather Be?
Post-Order 636 evolution depends on aggressive regulatory and legislative reform.
"Get out of the gas business. Drop the merchant function. We can't make any money selling gas and we are constantly at risk to having gas costs disallowed. It's a no-win situation.
Rapid developments in the electric industry, especially in wholesale markets, have prompted the Virginia State Corporation Commission (SCC) to extend its review of a utility's plans to add to its transmission system. Appalachian Power Co., an operating member of the American Electric Power (AEP) system, had asked the SCC for authority to construct a 765-kilovolt transmission line between substations in West Virginia and Virginia.
An LDC Caucus report, An Issue Paper Regarding Future Unsubscribed Pipeline Capacity, forecasts an increase in reduced subscriptions of firm capacity due to a combination of factors:
s Shifting patterns of gas purchasing will reduce the need for transportation over certain pipeline corridors.
s Single-fixed-variable rate design makes capacity reservation costly for LDCs with low load factors.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has issued a certificate allowing Steuben Gas Storage Co. (SGS) to construct and operate an underground natural gas storage field, the Thomas Corners Field.
In a preliminary finding that SGS lacked market power, the FERC authorized the company to charge market-based rates, subject to reexamination (Docket Nos. CP95-119-000 et al.).
That was the question on the minds of representatives from local telephone exchange carriers (LECs) who huddled at the United States Telephone Association (USTA) National Issues Conference days before legislators passed sweeping telecommunications legislation that would affect everyone's future.
But the question went beyond what would become law when President Clinton fulfilled his promise to sign the bill.
A century ago, Congress conveyed valuable public property to certain entrepreneurs to serve the public interest. In exchange, these entrepreneurs agreed to carry the nation's principal means of communication at fair cost and, of course, serve the national defense.
In 1850, with a commitment to move the mail at fixed rates and freely transport federal troops hither and yon, a swath of public land was granted to the Illinois Central to connect Chicago with Mobile.
"Anyone who assumes rural electric cooperatives will not be fully engaged in whatever system we have . . . if they assume the more competitive it becomes, the less we'll be engaged . . . they're very wrong."
(em Glenn English, CEO,
National Rural Electric
Cooperative Association
Ten terms as a U.S. Representative from Oklahoma's Sixth District taught Glenn English how to build consensus.