Away

After notching a new 16-month high and cutting a wide 27-cent trading range last Thursday, natural gas futures settled down on Friday as buyers stepped back to survey the situation. Without that buying pressure, the market dropped precipitously at mid-day only to rebound modestly at the closing bell. November closed at $4.239, down 6 cents for the session, but up 9.3 cents for the week.

Not even a late, short-covering rally could take it away from bears Wednesday. It was their day. In addition to slipping 2 cents to close at $4.227, the November futures contract completed the bearish trifecta by notching both a lower low and lower high for the session. The only thing shaky about the down-move was that it came on light estimated volume of just 61,313 contracts.

Dynegy Inc. punted away two assets last week and in return, received some cash to put toward its sagging liquidity. Last Monday, it sold one of its two natural gas storage facilities in the United Kingdom, and on Wednesday, sold the last asset it held in Northern Natural Gas Co. (NNG). Together, the two sales added close to $300 million to the coffers.

Building on its efforts to move away from a hub-and-spoke approach in determining market power, FERC last week lifted the curtain on a new interim power generation market screen to be used in analyzing market-based rates, and found three utilities, Entergy, Southern Co., and AEP, that didn’t pass the test.

With two hurricanes moving away from the Gulf of Mexico and influences from weather and storage still as negative as they were prior to the weekend, it was natural for most prices to be softening Monday. The exceptions to declining numbers were chiefly in the rebounding West and at Northeast citygates.

Spurred by high prices, the natural gas exploration and production industry blew away the record books in 2000, recording an “unusual” 6% increase in proved reserves, “by far the largest increase since EIA (Energy Information Administration) has been estimating the nation’s proved gas reserves.”

Spurred by high prices, the natural gas exploration and production industry blew away the record books in 2000, recording an “unusual” 6% increase in proved reserves, “by far the largest increase since the Energy Information Administration (EIA) has been estimating the nation’s proved gas reserves.”

Despite record results in drilling and earnings in the quarter just completed, Seneca Resources, the E&P subsidiary of National Fuel Gas (NFG), is changing its strategy over the next several years, gradually decreasing drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and “moving our drilling dollars to California, Canada and Appalachia,” Seneca President James A. Beck said.

Despite record results in drilling and earnings in the quarter just completed, Seneca Resources, the E&P subsidiary of National Fuel Gas (NFG), is changing its strategy over the next several years, gradually decreasing drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and “moving our drilling dollars to California, Canada and Appalachia,” Seneca President James A. Beck said.