Amid

The new international natural gas trade year is off to a brisk start amid predictions that 2008 will mark the start of a price recovery and possibly a drilling revival for Canadian producers.

Multi-dollar drops at Northeast citygates were conspicuous amid continuing declines at most points Friday. Heating load was dropping due to moderating weather trends in several regions; storage use continued to supplant spot gas buying and the weekend loss of industrial load was a factor.

Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) last week stepped down from key committee posts amid the fallout from his arrest by an undercover police detective investigating lewd conduct in a men’s restroom at the Minneapolis Airport. The embattled lawmaker was said to be on the verge of resigning from the Senate Friday, the New York Times reported.

Embattled Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) will temporarily step down from key committee posts amid Senate Republican leadership calls for his resignation in the wake of his arrest by an undercover police detective investigating lewd conduct in a men’s room at the Minneapolis Airport.

In the wake of a blistering report by the Interior Department Inspector General last week of ethics violations and amid fresh allegations that top agency officials blocked four auditors from recovering millions of dollars in oil and natural gas royalties from producers, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) Thursday called on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to schedule a hearing to question Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne about the charges and what he is doing to address the ethics problems at the department.

Amid rising concern about a potential price crash this summer because there likely will be little if any capacity left for storage injections, the cash market may have hinted at what is in store by plummeting across the board Friday.

Triple-digit spikes at Northeast citygates stood out amid otherwise mixed pricing Friday that nevertheless had a major bias toward the upside. The extra Northeast strength was hardly surprising, since that region was destined to bear the brunt of a weekend return to widespread, very cold weather.

Some Northeast citygates peaked above $9 and realized dollar-plus increases Friday amid gains at nearly all points in trading for the holiday weekend. That was hardly surprising with freezing weather due throughout Canada and most of the U.S. And for a change cash prices had prior-day screen support to set against the usual extra decline of industrial load during a long weekend.

Amid the political and regulatory euphoria over California’s largest-ever solar incentive program that state regulators approved Thursday are various skeptics questioning the economics of heavily underwriting a technology that is far from being commercially competitive. These concerns caused one of the California Public Utilities Commission members to vote against the massive program that will be paid for by private-sector utility ratepayers.