Arena

Houston-based Ultra Petroleum Corp. is exiting the international arena to focus its “full attention” on its legacy asset in the Pinedale Anticline field, CEO Michael D. Watford said. Ultra agreed to sell Sino-American Energy Co., which represents all of its interests in Bohai Bay, China, to SPC E&P (China) Pte Ltd. for $223 million. The reserve volumes sold represent all of Ultra’s international assets and comprise about 1% of its year-end 2006 proved reserves. The sale is expected to close in 4Q2007. Even with the sale of the international assets, Watford said Ultra still expects to deliver more than 20% organic production growth in 2008 and 2009.

Dallas-based EXCO Resources Inc., which moved to the public arena in February, is joining the move by other exploration and production (E&P) companies to form a master limited partnership (MLP). EXCO’s MLP would own a “substantial” portion of mature producing oil and natural gas properties in the Appalachian, East Texas, North Louisiana, Midcontinent and Permian Basin areas.

A separate arena has been created for a duel over constitutional aspects of Canada’s northern pipeline plan, sparing the beleaguered Mackenzie Gas Project (MGP) a potentially lengthy further regulatory delay.

A separate arena has been created for a duel over constitutional aspects of Canada’s northern pipeline plan, sparing the beleaguered Mackenzie Gas Project (MGP) a potentially lengthy further regulatory delay.

Due to evolving trading practices and the recent influx of funds into the futures and options market arena, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said last week that it will begin publishing an additional Commitments of Traders (COT) report in January that will show aggregate futures and options positions of noncommercial, commercial and index traders in 12 selected agricultural commodities. The new report, which is to be published on a two year, pilot-program basis, could be expanded to other commodities such as energy if deemed successful.

Due to evolving trading practices and the recent influx of funds into the futures and options market arena, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said Tuesday that it will begin publishing an additional Commitments of Traders (COT) report in January that will show aggregate futures and options positions of noncommercial, commercial and index traders in 12 selected agricultural commodities. The new report, which is to be published on a two year, pilot-program basis, could be expanded to other commodities such as energy if deemed successful.

Just days after hedge fund Amaranth Advisors LLC warned investors of significant losses due to wrong-way bets in the natural gas futures arena, the company’s founder in a conference call with investors Friday said Amaranth plans to continue operations while working to restore the confidence of investors.

Just days after hedge fund Amaranth Advisors LLC warned investors of significant losses due to ill-advised positions in the natural gas futures arena, the ramifications of those losses on the market — now reported to be as high as $5 billion — are slowly coming into better view. In addition, one prominent broker said that without hedge fund regulation the market will “definitely see more of these blowouts” down the road.

Lack of above-normal temperatures and tropical disturbance development tied with weakness in the petroleum arena allowed natural gas futures on Monday to continue to explore the downside. After reaching a low of $6.710, September natural gas wound up staging a minor rally in closing out the day at $6.913, still down 35.6 cents from Friday.