Leticia Gonzales

Liquefied natural gas (LNG) buyers beginning in October will be able to purchase physical volumes of the super-chilled fuel through CME Group’s new LNG futures contract, the company said Wednesday.

The spigot has opened on a new crude oil pipeline to transport Permian Basin supplies from a connection point near San Antonio, TX, down to NuStar Energy LP’s Corpus Christi terminal.

The developers of a proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in Lake Charles, LA, have asked federal regulators for a five-year construction extension, citing a “complex international merger” that required re-evaluating the project and negotiating project agreements.

Natural gas consumers in New Jersey will have greater accessibility to supply this winter now that Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Co. (Transco) has placed into full service the Rivervale South to Market project.

Although the natural gas market is approaching the time of year when weather typically takes a back seat to other market drivers, expectations for more heat later this month drove up September bidweek prices in much of the country.

Hotter trends held in the latest weather models, leading to another surge for natural gas futures. Already being driven by “heavily crowded short speculative trade,” the October Nymex contract surged as high as $2.31 before going on to settle Thursday at $2.296, up 7.4 cents on the day. November climbed 6.8 cents to $2.342.

After accumulating a record number of short positions earlier in August, speculative traders drove natural gas futures prices sharply higher for the Aug. 23-28 period. Strong cash prices, hefty intake from liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facilities and a temporary dip in production further fueled forward markets this week, with double-digit gains seen across most of the country, according to NGI’s Forward Look.

Natural gas traders got a jump start on Friday ahead of the long Labor Day holiday, with low volumes of gas traded at prices not far removed from the previous day’s settles. With bears failing to make a big splash, the October Nymex gas futures contract slipped only 1.1 cents to $2.285, and November fell 1.8 cents to $2.324.

Suffocating conditions continued across California, the Southwest and Texas during the last week of August, leading to a rare storage withdrawal for this time of year in the Golden State as pipelines coped with strong demand. Mild, stormy conditions over the rest of the United States, however, left weekly prices mixed and the NGI Spot Gas Weekly Avg. up just 4 cents from Aug. 26-29. Gas traded on Thursday was for delivery Friday and Saturday.