SoCal Gas to supply natgas to PG&E for March

Wednesday February 28, 1:24 PM EST LOS ANGELES, Feb 28 (Reuters) - Southern California Gas Co. said Wednesday it will buy up to 30 million cubic a day of natural gas for Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) until March 31 to help the near-bankrupt utility secure gas for its customers.

PG&E, a unit of San Francisco-based PG&E Corp. (PCG), has asked SoCal Gas for help buying natural gas after several gas marketers refused to do further business with the utility unless they were paid in advance.

SoCal Gas, a unit of San Diego, Calif.-based Sempra Energy (SRE), said in a statement that PG&E will guarantee payment for the gas by pledging its gas customers' monthly bills as collateral as long as the unpaid balances do not exceed $16.5 million.

SoCal Gas said it will purchase the gas from the Pacific Northwest and sell it to PG&E "at a price marginally above the cost of procurement." The company did not elaborate.

PG&E said on Tuesday that it was still scrambling to buy 30 to 40 percent of its gas stocks for March as suppliers continued to refuse to do business with the utility.

http://money.iwon.com/jsp/nw/nwdt_rt.jsp?section=news&news_id=reu-n28293598&feed=reu&date=20010228&cat=INDUSTRY

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), March 01, 2001

Answers

This remains an urgent and scary (!) issue. Yet, in all this talk about state take-over of the utilities, I have never read any comments from the governor on gas (??).

-- Swissrose (cellier3@mindspring.com), March 01, 2001.