Appear

Despite relatively low natural gas prices and a record-setting season for U.S. natural gas storage, it would appear that producers are not shying away from their development of shale plays, judging by the latest Baker Hughes rig count.

Sometimes what goes down keeps going down. That would appear to be true of natural gas prices. Wednesday analysts at Goldman Sachs cut their 2011 New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex) gas price forecast to $4/MMBtu from $5.25/MMBtu. And just a day earlier Barclays Capital analysts were asking “Who stepped on my forward curve?”

Despite relatively low natural gas prices and a record-setting season for U.S. natural gas storage, it would appear that producers are not shying away from their development of shale plays, judging by the latest Baker Hughes rig count.

Sometimes what goes down keeps going down. That would appear to be true of natural gas prices.

A modest “re-acceleration” in sequential natural gas supply growth in 3Q2010 doesn’t appear to be slowing down, and in fact implies that gas supplies could jump again in the final three months of the year by as much as 1.5 Bcf/d, analysts with Raymond James & Associates Inc. said last week.

A modest “re-acceleration” in sequential natural gas supply growth in 3Q2010 doesn’t appear to be slowing down, and in fact implies that gas supplies could jump again in the final three months of the year by as much as 1.5 Bcf/d, analysts with Raymond James & Associates Inc. said Monday.

Shale play activity has come on like gangbusters in recent years, greatly augmenting the overall supply picture. Some producers appear dubious about how sustainable even the highly competitive economics of shale drilling are during a period in which gas prices universally have slipped below $4 into the pipe, but many keep shifting rigs into their shale acreage anyway.

Natural gas prices appear likely to have bottomed, but any “significant” improvement in prices is unlikely over the coming year, Moody’s Investors Service said in a revised outlook for the global exploration and production (E&P) sector.

Canada nor its provinces have adequate regulations in place to address the scale or cumulative impact of hydraulic fracturing (hydrofracking) on water resources, according to a report issued on Thursday by the water program at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs.