Amount

Even with a fairly impressive amount of heating load remaining in play on the first official day of spring, the cash market was mostly softer as mixed pricing extended into a fourth straight trading day Monday.

Gulf of Mexico shut-in gas production was 1.954 Bcf/d as of Thursday afternoon, according to the Minerals Management Service. The amount is equivalent to 19.54% of daily Gulf gas production, which currently stands at about 10 Bcf/d.

Petro-Canada on Thursday agreed to spend C$3.4 billion for its capital and exploration program in 2006, nearly equal to the amount spent this year. However, the producer will raise its spending on North American natural gas programs to C$850 million from the C$700 million spent this year in part to focus on expanding output in Western Canada and the U.S. Rockies.

While a significant amount of Gulf of Mexico natural gas production will be offline during the winter heating season as a result of post-hurricane damage, residential customer needs will be met due to the high level of demand destruction in the industrial sector that is anticipated, says a new study that was released by a major pipeline group last Wednesday.

Creating a Strategic Natural Gas Reserve similar to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve would not be a good idea in light of the limited amount of domestic gas supply currently available, a group of industrial energy consumers told the Bush administration Thursday.

While a significant amount of Gulf of Mexico natural gas production will be offline during the winter heating season as a result of post-hurricane damage, residential customer needs will be met due to the high level of demand destruction in the industrial sector that is anticipated, says a new study that was released by a major pipeline group Wednesday.

An estimated 650 Bcf of Gulf natural gas production will have been lost — or more than twice the amount of gas lost to date (321 Bcf) since Hurricane Katrina struck in late August — by the time industry fully recovers in early 2006, FERC staff said in a market assessment of the upcoming heating season that was released Thursday. That would mean that 18% of the Gulf’s annual gas output would be lost as a result of hurricane-related damages. The agency also projected that almost 2 Bcf/d will remain shut in during the November-through-March winter period.

On a split vote and with a relatively large amount of discussion, the five-member California Public Utilities Commission, minus one of its commissioners, voted 3-1 Thursday to approve an expanded natural gas hedging program for Pacific Gas and Electric Co. The continuing concern over the impact of rising wholesale prices for natural gas in the wake of the two Gulf Coast hurricanes was a strong focus of both the action and discussion.

The amount of shut-in Gulf of Mexico natural gas production dropped only 48 MMcf/d Thursday from levels on Wednesday, the Minerals Management Service (MMS) reported. And the Henry Hub, the delivery point for gas futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange, remained shut down for an eighth straight day, according to operator Sabine Pipeline.