Always

Even though experts predicted the energy market would make a U-turn, “it is always painful when reality slaps you in the face,” according to Raymond James Energy’s “Stat of the Week.” As early as April, energy analyst Marshall Adkins predicted mid-$5/Mcf prices were not going to be sustainable with expected large gas injections. Through July, he predicts natural gas prices will continue to fall.

Even though experts predicted the energy market would make a U-turn, “it is always painful when reality slaps you in the face,” according to Raymond James Energy’s “Stat of the Week.” As early as April, energy analyst Marshall Adkins predicted mid-$5/Mcf prices were not going to be sustainable with expected large gas injections. Through July, he predicts natural gas prices will continue to fall.

California’s rural counties representing powerful water andagricultural interests that have always carried a lot of clout instate political arenas have stepped into the ongoing electricitypublic debate advocating changes in the auction process in thestate-run wholesale spot power market.

With the retail prices for No. 2 heating oil reportedly hittingwell over $2.00/gal. in some parts of New England, natural gas —which has always been considered the ugly stepsister in the region— is starting to look pretty good to residential customers there.

Unlike a week earlier, the slump in gas demand that almostalways accompanies a weekend had its usual negative effect on cashprices Friday. Declines ranged from only 3-4 cents at Midwest andNortheast citygates to as much as a dime or so at Southwest andRockies points, where most of the maintenance outages at processingplants and compressor stations had ended by Friday. Most otherpoints registered drops of about a nickel.

Significant savings are increasingly hard to come by for large,multi-facility energy users even with the help of outside energyexperts, according to panelists last week discussing energymanagement outsourcing at NGI’s GasMart/Power ’99 in Dallas.

Significant savings are increasingly hard to come by for large,multi-facility energy users even when using outside energy expertsin the face of volatile commodity markets and increasing pressuresinside their companies to show significant returns on investments,according to panelists yesterday discussing energy managementoutsourcing Monday at GasMart/Power ’99 in Dallas.

Futures traders are always looking to historical price patternsto predict future trends, but last week they were particularlyfocused on the last 40 trading days and the average of thosesettlement prices. Referred to as the 40-day, the prompt month’s40-day moving average has been an increasingly important indicatorfor those looking to predict a price move in the market. But boththe magnitude and duration of those swings have decreased in thepast several weeks, leading traders to hypothesize some of thedynamics in the market could be changing. Some of those changeshave been evidenced by the December contract’s inability to sustaina move much above or below the 40-day moving average in recentweeks. And last Friday was no different when the December contractrebounded 6.5 cents to settle at $2.459, just 1.4 cents below the40-day.

Shell Oil has become a significant player in the midstream gasbusiness, but this wasn’t always so. While the company heldmidstream gas assets, they were operated as an adjunct to its oilbusiness. That was until deregulation and new market entrantssuggested to Shell it ought to get into the midstream.