This current information is available in time for readers to use it for the 2000-2001 “gas year,†that is, the year that starts in the summer as the heating demand season grows nearer. Thus the reader can intelligently make decisions about this year’s fuel supplies.
This edition’s focus is today’s overwhelming influence of the electric industry on the gas industry. Besides being the crucial factor in the gas industry’s expansion, the electric industry is converging with the gas industry through mergers and acquisitions and numerous other ways. The first section of the book comprises a scrupulously researched analysis of this trend and current strategies. This section, as well as many chapters in other sections, comprises a scrupulously researched analysis of this trend and current strategies, giving benefits from reading it like the following: o Better morale, decreased legal costs, from avoiding ill-advised moves o More-successful mergers o New funds for expansion moves o Efficiency through common standards for electric and gas o More profitable gas and electric unbundling on the state level
Next, marketing is dealt with, including detailed chapters about marketing trends, contracts, and new quantitative methods that allow improved risk management for gas or Btu portfolios. o o o Benefits include o Expansion into Btu marketing o Better marketing-company strategic direction o Potential dollar savings of tens of millions by simple contract change o Decreased price risk o Improved profits from each trade from new, advanced techniques
An international section follows, detailing an improved playing field in Mexico, project-by project supply analysis for Canada, and new information about the incredible potential supply and demand in the Russian Far East and Asia. Some benefits are o Reopening Mexico to investment o Profits from better supply strategies to Midwest and Northeast markets o Improved risk profile, growth from intelligence about Canada o Specific opportunities for possibly huge growth in Russia, China, and Japan, in reserves and pipelines
Natural gas is very, very heavily regulated in the United States, thus it is logical that the longest section of the book deals with federal and state regulation of the industry and of the electric industry as it affects natural gas. Benefits include, among many others: o Flexibility from listing and analysis of new rate structures o Opportunities from Order 637 and other recent regulation o Better policies about how to cope with landowners, the new investment return policy, and environmental issues o New funds sources o Safer asset optimization deals o Lower costs from better financial strategies o New markets from better state-regulatory strategies
A final chapter integrates the outlooks for gas markets, transportation, and reserves.