Approaches

As the long-awaited Deep Panuke project off the east coast of Nova Scotia, operated by EnCana Corp., approaches the development phase, subsidiaries of ExxonMobil and Shell have offered to sell their interests.

As the long-awaited Deep Panuke project off the east coast of Nova Scotia, operated by EnCana Corp., approaches the development phase, subsidiaries of ExxonMobil and Shell have offered to sell their interests.

The Consumer Energy Council of America (CECA) on Wednesday said it supports increased research and development of technologies and approaches to develop nonconventional sources of natural gas, including methane hydrates, ultra-deepwater development, deep gas formations, coalbed methane, shale gas and syngas from coal or biomass. The group also became the first consumer organization to advocate the expansion of nuclear power.

As winter approaches it may be only a matter of time before the gas market bears run out of fundamentals pointing in their favor, but right now offshore gas production shut-ins are falling steadily, Texas production is on the rise, and the warm weather and downward price pressure continues.

With Hurricane Ivan’s latest path putting it on an unobstructed collision course with the Eastern and Central Gulf of Mexico, Producers have been put on high alert. Most Gulf producers have evacuated non-essential employees, while some companies have already shut in a portion of their production in the area.

Pulling itself back up from its low $4.60 level late last week, October natural gas futures rebounded slightly following the long holiday weekend. The contract traded as high as $4.83 earlier in the session, but settled at $4.79, up 11.5 cents from Friday.

Continuing to scratch new lows as it approaches expiry, the September natural gas futures contract in overnight Access trading and the regular session Tuesday carved out lows of $5.25 and $5.26, respectively, the lowest the contract has traded since Feb. 25, when it notched $5.22.

Members of the badly fractured California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) cracked heads again Tuesday during an all-day hearing on a proposed core/noncore electricity market for the state that included presentations from two-dozen industry stakeholders and academics. The public exchanges underscored the continuing sharp difference of opinion on what direction the state’s energy policy should take three years after the crisis of 2000-2001.

As Ontario approaches the one-year anniversary of a significant blackout that hit the province and large swaths of the United States and eastern Canada on Aug. 14, 2003, the province appears less at risk now for experiencing a similar type of outage, said David McFadden, who represents Canada in the electric system working group for the Canada-U.S. joint task force that has been examining last year’s historic blackout.