Anything

The energy platform espoused by Democrats meeting at the national convention this week in Denver has little, if anything, to offer the oil and natural gas industry.

Traders were prepared for anything Tuesday as the debate swirled on whether there would be enough momentum left from Monday’s natural gas futures price jump to fuel another round of short-covering. The answer, at least for now, is “no,” as the July contract dropped 12.7 cents to settle at $8.064.

Coming off a very warm end to 2006, one forecasting firm warns that the world hasn’t seen anything yet. The Met Office, which is the United Kingdom’s National Weather Service, said late last week that 2007 is likely to be the warmest year on record globally, beating out the current record set in 1998.

Coming off a very warm end to 2006, one forecasting firm warns that the world hasn’t seen anything yet. The Met Office, which is the United Kingdom’s National Weather Service, said Thursday that 2007 is likely to be the warmest year on record globally, beating out the current record set in 1998.

Following repeated failed attempts to bust out to the upside earlier in the week, exhausted traders were comfortable with doing not much of anything in quiet trading on Friday. After trading lower in the overnight Thursday Globex session, December natural gas maintained a slim 14-cent range Friday before closing at $7.794, down 16.1 cents on the day and 9 cents lower than the previous week’s close.

The U.S. natural gas market continues to be the “nation’s silent energy crisis,” but The Dow Chemical Co. has been “anything but silent…and is pounding the pavement” to seek solutions to dwindling domestic supply and increasing demand, John Dearborn, Dow’s vice president of energy, said last week.

The U.S. natural gas market continues to be the “nation’s silent energy crisis,” but The Dow Chemical Co. has been “anything but silent…and is pounding the pavement” to seek solutions to dwindling domestic supply and increasing demand, John Dearborn, Dow’s vice president of energy, said Tuesday.

Energy legislation proposed by the House Republican leadership Wednesday has come under attack by chemical producers for its failure to include anything that would increase natural gas supply and moderate prices.

Completing the third official week of winter on Wednesday, temperatures for a majority of the U.S remain anything but winter-like as warmer than normal weather continues to flood many regions of the country. The warming trend has alleviated the perceived pressure on natural gas supply as the Gulf of Mexico continues to recover from 2005’s overactive hurricane season.