![](media/image1.jpeg){width="8.5in"
height="3.5027777777777778in"}**U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY**

**Office of Energy Assurance**

**ENERGY ASSURANCE DAILY**

**December 1, 2003**

**Electricity**

**High winds lead to power outages at 11,000 homes in Maine**

High winds knocked out electrical service to more than 11,000 homes
across Maine on Saturday. About 7,000 Central Maine Power Co. customers
and 4,500 Bangor Hydro Electric Co. customers were still without
electricity Saturday evening. CMP spokesman John Carroll said Saturday
night, he expected power to be restored to most homes Saturday night,
but that some homes in Brunswick and Bridgton might be without power
until Sunday morning. CMP postponed a planned power outage from 12:30 to
4 a.m. Sunday in Kittery and York, where crews were scheduled to work on
a substation in preparation for a new, 10-mile-long, high-voltage
transmission line to be installed in the area. Carroll said the planned
outage will take place next Sunday at the same time.
<http://powermarketers.netcontentinc.net/newsreader.asp?ppa=8knsoZZgiipphmWSecw11rbfeiZv>

# 

# Snowstorm Knocks Out Power In Upstate New York

Wind-whipped snow created near-blizzard conditions across upstate New
York this weekend, knocking out electricity to thousands of customers
and causing at least two traffic deaths. The deadly storm surged across
central and western New York Saturday, dropping between three to 10
inches of snow accompanied by winds gusting up to 44 mph. Some 11,000
customers lost electricity at the height of the storm. Most homes had
power restored by Saturday night and utility crews were working Sunday
to get the rest back on line.

<http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,BT_CO_20031130_001231,00.html>

**Exelon\'s 1,144 MW LaSalle 1, Ill. nuke shut\
**Exelon Nuclear\'s 1,144 megawatt LaSalle 1 nuclear power unit in
Illinois was shut as of early Friday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
said in its daily reactor status report. The unit, in Seneca, Illinois,
had been operating at 100 percent power as of early Wednesday, the NRC
said in a previous report. Exelon told the NRC that LaSalle 1 was shut
due to decreasing reactor vessel water level, the NRC said in its daily
events report. Exelon told the NRC the unit was shut while operating at
23 percent power in a reduction in preparation to take the main
generator off line for maintenance. .
<http://biz.yahoo.com/rm/031128/utilities_exelon_lasalle_1.html>

**U.S. FERC May Set Grid Standards if Congress Cannot**\
An energy bill stalled in the U.S. Senate would have FERC create
mandatory reliability standards to prevent another blackout like the one
in August that left some 50 million Americans in the dark. But FERC will
consider moving ahead with its own standards, possibly by this summer,
if Congress is unable to pass a bill, FERC Chairman Pat Wood told an
agency conference on grid reliability. Officials from the North American
Electric Reliability Council, an industry-funded group, were scheduled
to address the meeting later on Monday. The group lacks the power to
levy penalties against utilities that violate its voluntary rules.
<http://biz.yahoo.com/rm/031201/utilities_blackout_1.html>

**Electricity Highway Getting Upgrade in San Francisco Area\
**In the largest upgrade to California\'s electricity grid in nearly a
decade, crews have started work on a \$306 million project to repair the
most notorious electricity bottleneck in the state \-- an 84-mile
stretch of high-voltage lines known as Path 15. In January, they will
begin erecting 247 steel towers, each about 220 feet high. The
completion date is a year from this past weekend, Nov. 29, 2004. Here,
California\'s primary corridor for moving electricity from power plants
in Southern California to consumers in the Bay Area narrows from three
major power lines to two. The bottleneck means that even when there is
ample electricity in Southern California, it cannot always get to the
north. For Silicon Valley, where the technology industry uses large
amounts of electricity but the region imports 80 percent of its power
from other places, boosting the reliability and capacity of Path 15 is
important, experts say. When finished, the beefed-up electricity highway
will bring the same amount of new electricity into the Bay Area and
Northern California as if three new large power plants had been built
\-- about 1,500 megawatts \-- or enough for 1.2 million homes.

<http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/7380406.htm>

**Nuclear Agency Changes its Stance on a Fire Safety Proposal**

After years of struggling to make reactor owners modify their plants to
protect electrical cables from fire, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
(NRC) is now proposing to amend its own rules, retroactively legalizing
an alternate strategy used by many plants, but never formally approved.
The change involves the cables that connect the control room with pumps,
valves, and other equipment needed to shut down a plant safely.
Previously, the commission wanted the reactors to separate the control
cables for redundant equipment, or install fire detection and
suppression equipment or fire barriers, so a single fire could not
disable all the cables. It now proposes to accept letting the plants
designate technicians who would run through the plant and operate
equipment by hand if the control cables had burned away. Under a
proposal published in the Federal Register on Wednesday, November 26,
the commission\'s staff would not evaluate the feasibility of such a
solution; instead, the reactor operators would draw up the plans. Mr.
Weerakkody, the NRC section chief for fire protection and special
studies, said that under the new proposal his agency would have a
uniform set of criteria for approving \"operator manual action\" plans
made by the plant managers. The proposal is available online:

<http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/fedreg/a031126c.html>

**Petroleum**

**Oil Tumbles as OPEC and Norway Say No Supply Cuts**\
Oil prices fell on Monday as OPEC ministers said they expected
Thursday\'s ministerial meeting to defer production cuts because fears
of a price collapse early next year have eased. Prices fell as ministers
from Iran, the United Arab Emirates, and Indonesia said they expected
the OPEC cartel to hold production quotas steady at a December 4 meeting
in Vienna. News that Iraq\'s crude oil exports rose by about 350,000
barrels per day (bpd) to 1.57 million bpd in November, meeting the
country\'s sales target also weighed on prices. Major non-OPEC oil
producer Norway said on Thursday that it had no plans to curb output
next year when the OPEC cartel fears prices may falter due to rising
world supplies. <http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/031201/markets_oil_2.html>
<http://biz.yahoo.com/rm/031127/energy_norway_3.html>

**Oil Worker Hostages in Nigeria Released Yesterday\
**Six foreign oil workers including one Briton kidnapped by militants in
Nigeria last week were released on Sunday night, a British embassy
spokesman said on Monday. A seventh hostage, from Australia, had already
been liberated on Saturday night after talks between the company, local
government and militant groups. There have been a string of kidnappings
of oil workers recently in the region, where impoverished fishing
communities have increasingly turned to violence to settle their
grievances. Nigeria \-- the world\'s seventh largest oil exporter \--
sent 3,000 police, soldiers and marines into the area around Warri in
September after ethnic clashes left almost 100 dead.
<http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/031201/crime_nigeria_hostages_1.html>

**Natural Gas**

**U.S. FERC OKs New Gas Pipeline for South Florida**

AES Ocean Express LLC has won final environmental clearance from FERC to
construct the 54-mile U.S. leg of a pipeline that would transport
vaporized gas to southern Florida from a proposed liquefied natural gas
(LNG) import terminal in the Bahamas. This action puts the AES Ocean
project ahead of the competing Bahamas-to-Florida projects sponsored by
Tractebel and El Paso Corp.

Natural Gas Intelligence

**Other News**

## Detroit Restaurant Leveled: Natural Gas Leak Likely Cause Residents near Telegraph Road and Puritan on Detroit\'s west side said Friday they now know how it must feel to live in a place like Baghdad. \"It sounded like a howitzer, like when I was in the service,\" said Fred Donald, whose home on Dale Street was littered with clumps of insulation after a nearby restaurant exploded late Thursday. Another neighbor on Dale, Kevin Pheeley, said he and his wife were startled out of bed just before midnight Thursday by a loud boom followed by two or three smaller explosions. The blast left Hanna\'s Family Restaurant, 16500 Telegraph, a twisted mass of rubble. One man was injured said Detroit Fire Department Lt. El Don Parham. Parham said natural gas \"has something to do with it, but we\'re looking a little deeper.\" [***http://www.freep.com/index.htm***](http://www.freep.com/index.htm)

**Energy Prices**

+-------------------------------+-----------+-----------+------------+
|                               | **Latest  | **Week    | **Year     |
|                               | (1        | Ago**     | Ago**      |
|                               | 2/1/03)** |           |            |
+-------------------------------+-----------+-----------+------------+
| **CRUDE OIL**                 | 30.33     | 30.25     | 26.40      |
|                               |           |           |            |
| **West Texas Intermediate     |           |           |            |
| US**                          |           |           |            |
|                               |           |           |            |
| \$/Barrel                     |           |           |            |
+-------------------------------+-----------+-----------+------------+
| **NATURAL GAS**               | 5.02      | 4.57      | 4.22       |
|                               |           |           |            |
| **Henry Hub**                 |           |           |            |
|                               |           |           |            |
| \$/Million Btu                |           |           |            |
+-------------------------------+-----------+-----------+------------+

> Source: Reuters, Wall Street Journal

**This Week in Petroleum** from the Energy Information Administration
(EIA)

[*http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/twip/twip.asp*](http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/twip/twip.asp)

Last Updated on November 26, 2003

**Natural Gas Weekly Update** from EIA

[*http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/ngw/ngupdate.asp*](http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/ngw/ngupdate.asp)

Last Updated on November 20, 2003 (next release 2:00 p.m. on December 4)

**Weekly Petroleum Status Report** from EIA**\
**[*http://www.eia.doe.gov/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/weekly_petroleum_status_report/wpsr.html*](http://www.eia.doe.gov/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/weekly_petroleum_status_report/wpsr.html)

Updated after 1:00pm (Eastern time) on Wednesdays