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The October wholesale natural gas was lower on Friday as lower cooling demand in the Northeast was weighing on natural gas prices in the short term. The October wholesale contract was lower by $0.065 on the day, settling at $3.915. The cooler weather in Texas this past week will be history due to the hotter than normal temperatures that should continue for the next few days with no rain in sight this week. According to some initial projections, the EIA storage injection this week will be in the upper 80’s, 20 bcf higher than last week due to lower cooling demand. However this estimate will be almost 10 bcf below the storage injection from 2010 and once again increase the storage deficit from a year ago.
In the state of Ohio due to budget cuts to local governments, city officials are finding more reasons to turn off the lights when they leave the room. Some have lobbied the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio for relief. Others have shaved costs by switching suppliers. Still others are simply letting their streets go dark. Newark recently experimented by turning off streetlights along a 3-mile section of Rt. 16. City officials abandoned the plan after questioning whether the safety risk was worth the savings of about $1,900 a year. Ashtabula, in northeastern Ohio, agreed in June to begin charging homeowners $36 a year to help pay for lights. In the Meigs County village of Middleport, the Village Council decided to turn off 130 of its 251 streetlights in May. Cities and municipalities have a double incentive to keep rates low: to control their own costs and to avoid raising taxes on residents and businesses already struggling financially. Upper Arlington, which spent $400,113 last year, recently moved from AEP to an unregulated supplier for a projected savings of $45,000 over two years. The city sent out several bid requests before choosing their new supplier.
In a study that probably should have been sponsored by the coal industry, it seems that switching from coal to natural gas, even though natural gas emits far less carbon dioxide, wouldn't significantly slow down climate change, a U.S. study says. The study by the National Center for Atmospheric Research underscores the conflicting ways in which fossil fuel burning affects Earth's climate. While coal use contributes to warming because it emits heat-trapping carbon dioxide, it also releases comparatively large amounts of sulfates and other particles that, although detrimental to the environment, cool the planet by blocking incoming sunlight, an NCAR release said. Natural gas operations, on the other hand, are known to leak a certain amount of methane, an especially potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. Computer simulations run by NCAR researcher Tom Wigley suggest a greater reliance on natural gas would begin to slow down the increase in global average temperature by 2050 but only by a few tenths of a degree. “Relying more on natural gas would reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, but it would do little to help solve the climate problem," according to NCAR.
Last but not least, the finalists for the 2011 E Source Utility Ad Awards Contest have been selected. The awards will be announced and presented at an awards luncheon on Wednesday, September 21. The E Source Utility Ad Awards Contest is the utility industry’s largest and most comprehensive advertising competition, attracting hundreds of entries. The goal of the contest is to recognize and reward creative excellence in utility advertising. The categories in the competition are the following: Ad campaign, Business ad, Outdoor ad, Print Ad, Radio Ad, TV/Video Ad. E Source will also be honoring the top-performing companies from several benchmark studies which include a survey of large business customers, A review of North American Electric and Gas Company IVR”S and Best Websites. We will await the awards and will present in a future commentary what judges were seeing as good quality from advertisers in our energy space.
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