INGAA

The Interstate Natural Gas Association of America (INGAA) has released a background report from its rate and policy analysis department that compares natural gas and electric restructuring costs. INGAA feels the gas industry experience offers lessons for federal and state regulators as they debate potential stranded costs from electric industry restructuring.

INGAA notes that the interstate pipelines had to adopt open access and provide their customers with choices before their stranded-cost liabilities were settled.

Whether you're a utility commissioner in Wyoming or Georgia, a v.p. for a leading marketer, or a commission division director in New Jersey, you share a common activity: learning by the seat of your pants about deregulating gas markets. In this gas forum, PUBLIC UTILITIES FORTNIGHTLY highlights developments across the nation.

Generation: Big orDistributed power may turn

heads, but economics points

to central plants.

By Joseph F. Schuler, Jr.

By 2010, distributed power technologies will make up as much as 30 percent of new electric generation.

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.

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.

Anyone on the East Coast can tell you a good snow story this winter. Like when I looked out my front window one morning and saw a four-wheel-drive utility vehicle get stuck in the middle of my street in downtown Washington. After spinning his wheels for a while, the driver got out and began walking toward Connecticut Avenue, a main DC thoroughfare.

The driver soon returned, carrying a fresh, steaming cafe latte from Starbucks in each gloved hand. He opened the door, climbed in, and gave one cup to his passenger.

Susan F. Tierney, former assistant secretary for policy at the U.S. Department of Energy, has joined The Economics Resource Group, Inc. as a managing consultant.

UGI Corp. has hired William D. Katz as v.p.-corporate development. He succeeds R. Paul Grady, now v.p.-sales/

operations of UGI's AmeriGas Propane subsidiary.

Stephen D. Chesebro', Tenneco Energy's CEO, was promoted to chairman. Edward J. Casey, Jr. joins the company as president and COO.

At its first-ever annual meeting, held in Baltimore, MD, GISB also was gently chided and commended by James J. Hoecker of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC): "I submit to you that GISB must not, in an attempt to please everyone, set standards at the lowest common denominator.

Entergy Corp. has hired John A. Brayman, former president of Ameritech Corp.'s telephone industry services subsidiary in Chicago. Brayman will continue company expansion into nonregulated, domestic energy, and utility-related business as executive v.p. of Entergy Enterprises, Inc. and president of an as-yet unnamed group.J. William Holden was named Southern Electric International's v.p. for operations and development in Latin America and the Caribbean.

GE Supply, a General Electric division, promoted William C. Betke to g.m.

Stephen P. Reynolds

President & CEO

Pacific Gas Transmission Co.

Standardization has been an issue in every industry since the beginning of the Machine Age. As products continue to evolve, we need something like GISB to help find a prudent and appropriate level of standardization.