Affected

Affected by news late Thursday of damaged and missing rigs and platforms discovered in the Gulf of Mexico (see related story), natural gas futures on Friday morning headed toward, and then through the all-important psychological $5 resistance level. October futures hit a high on the day of $5.27 as of 1:16 p.m. (EDT), a 55.1 cent premium over Thursday’s settle.

What some had expected to be moderate softness Friday turned into a general rout. Beset by generally light cooling load outside the southernmost U.S., recent screen weakness, a California OFO and the industrial load loss associated with a weekend, price drops ranged from a quarter to around half a dollar. The West took most of the heaviest losses.

System integrity work on the 36-inch Grande Prairie Mainline is on schedule (see Daily GPI, Feb. 26) and all affected services are scheduled to be restored at the start of Wednesday’s gas day, NOVA reported Tuesday. Customers’ nominations will be reinstated to pre-outage levels, but Common Stream Operators will be required to submit new allocations to reflect nomination changes, NOVA said.

Paramount Energy Trust, the largest Canadian gas producer affected by the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board’s (EUB) bitumen conservation policy (see Daily GPI, July 23), indicated Wednesday that the impact of the EUB decision on gas production could be less severe than previously thought because many wells either will be exempted from the policy or grandfathered under a previous ruling.

The El Nino weather pattern, said NW Natural, which affected the western United States in December 2002, continued in early 2003, “such that January weather in NW Natural’s service area was 15% warmer than average.” Overall, first quarter temperatures were 8% warmer than average and 12% warmer than in the first quarter of 2002.

Buoyed largely by “significant asset acquisitions” completed during the past year, Houston-based El Paso Energy Partners LP reported last week a 77% jump in net income for the third quarter over a year ago. The company said approximately $2.2 million, or five cents per unit, had been shaved from its quarterly earnings due to disruptions caused by Hurricane Isadore and a loss associated with a natural gas hedging transaction.

Nicor Inc. saw its stock price nearly cut in half Friday morning after reporting a slew of bad news, some of which also spilled over on Dynegy Inc., a joint venture partner. Nicor, long considered a stable old-line utility investment, stunned the market by reversing all of its first quarter earnings and excluding all of its second quarter earnings for a rate program used by subsidiary Nicor Gas, which contributed to a 36% drop in second quarter earnings. The board of directors in turn moved into action, appointing a special, independent committee to investigate the subsidiary’s natural gas purchases, sales, transportation and storage.

Nicor Inc. saw its stock price nearly cut in half Friday morning after reporting a slew of bad news, some of which also spilled over on Dynegy Inc., a joint venture partner. Nicor, long considered a stable old-line utility investment, stunned the market by reversing all of its first quarter earnings and excluding all of its second quarter earnings for a rate program used by subsidiary Nicor Gas, which contributed to a 36% drop in second quarter earnings. The board of directors in turn moved into action, appointing a special, independent committee to investigate the subsidiary’s natural gas purchases, sales, transportation and storage.

Nicor Inc. saw its stock price nearly cut in half Friday morning after reporting a slew of bad news, some of which also spilled over on Dynegy Inc., a joint venture partner. Nicor, long considered a stable old-line utility investment, stunned the market by reversing all of its first quarter earnings and excluding all of its second quarter earnings for a rate program used by subsidiary Nicor Gas, which contributed to a 36% drop in second quarter earnings. The board of directors in turn moved into action, appointing a special, independent committee to investigate the subsidiary’s natural gas purchases, sales, transportation and storage.