Alarm

Expressing “alarm” that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is not registering all swap dealers that are active in energy markets, six prominent senators from the West Coast said they were “increasingly concerned” that the $8 billion annual de minimis threshold exemption in the agency’s Dodd-Frank rules may allow the vast majority of the energy swap market to fly under the regulator’s radar.

As the Pine Ridge fire in Colorado expanded Friday, up to 50 natural gas wells were shut in by three operators along the Western Slope in the Piceance Basin. In one case, wells were shut before operators were asked to do so by the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM), according to the Colorado Oil and Gas Association (COGA).

The board of directors of Russian natural gas giant OAO Gazprom sounded another blast on its shale gas alarm last Tuesday, questioning the environmental and economic viability of the process that is overhauling North American markets and promising to do the same in Europe.

The board of directors of Russian natural gas giant OAO Gazprom sounded another blast on its shale gas alarm Tuesday, questioning the environmental and economic viability of the process that is overhauling North American markets and promising to do the same in Europe.

World natural gas production leaders were again sounding the alarm over the creation of an OPEC-style natural gas organization, as energy emissaries of Russia, Iran and Qatar emerged from a meeting in Tehran last Tuesday saying they were working on the framework for a group of gas-exporting nations. But industry veterans are questioning what kind of an organization would evolve and how successful it would be.

World natural gas production leaders were again sounding the alarm over the creation of an OPEC-style natural gas organization, as energy emissaries of Russia, Iran and Qatar emerged from a meeting in Tehran Tuesday saying they were working on the framework for a group of gas-exporting nations. But industry veterans are questioning what kind of an organization would evolve and how successful it would be.

The growing alarm about the impact that hedge funds are having in the natural gas futures market is largely unfounded, FERC Chairman Pat Wood, CFTC Chairman Sharon Brown-Hruska and Nymex Chairman Mitchell Steinhause said recently in three separate letters to Rep. John D. Dingell (D-MI), ranking member on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

The growing alarm about the impact that hedge funds are having in the natural gas futures market is largely unfounded, FERC Chairman Pat Wood, CFTC Chairman Sharon Brown-Hruska and Nymex Chairman Mitchell Steinhause said in three separate letters to Rep. John D. Dingell (D-MI), ranking member on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

Alarm bells should be ringing in the offices of pipeline companies and domestic producers as imported liquefied natural gas (LNG) is expected to grow to about 12% of annual U.S. gas supply in 2010 from only about 1-1.5% today. Such a dramatic increase in supply, coming into the market at brand new locations, will drive down pipeline transportation values and gas prices, according to analysis done by Wakefield, MA-based Energy Security Analysis Inc. (ESAI).