Awhile

One day after HB 401 — also known as the Natural Gas Horizontal Wells Control Act –garnered overwhelming support in both houses of the West Virginia legislature (see Shale Daily, Dec. 15), advocates for the shale gas industry, surface owners’ rights and the environment told NGI’s Shale Daily on Thursday that the bill isn’t all they had hoped for.

Natural gas prices of $6/Mcf or less are not a short-term market aberration, but rather will be around for awhile, a Bentek Energy executive said last week.

Natural gas prices of $6/Mcf or less are not a short-term market aberration, but rather will be around for awhile, a Bentek Energy executive said Tuesday.

Putting aside for awhile the fact that there is 1.1 Tcf more gas in storage than at the same time last year, gas futures traders instead apparently focused on the large 190 Bcf withdrawal from storage last week that the American Gas Association reported on Wednesday. February futures prices were up in the high $2.20s during almost the entire regular trading session on Thursday before taking a sharp dive back into the high teens after 2 p.m. February ended the day down 4.3 cents at $2.185 just above its low of $2.18 and well below its high of $2.30.

Colder temperatures that moved into the central and eastern United States over the extended holiday weekend should stick around for another two weeks, according to Salomon Smith Barney meteorologist Jon Davis.

For now, California and other parts of the nation can thank Mother Nature for saving consumers from severe and sustained summer energy price spikes, and perhaps bolstering the political resolve to keep pushing ahead with market-based energy solutions, said a Wall Street analyst with Commerzbank Securities. However, the market fundamentals are still present to sustain higher-than-historic prices and volatility, particularly for natural gas.

For now, California and other parts of the nation can thank Mother Nature for saving consumers from severe and sustained summer energy price spikes, and perhaps bolstering the political resolve to keep pushing ahead with market-based energy solutions, said a Wall Street analyst with Commerzbank Securities. However, the market fundamentals are still present to sustain higher-than-historic prices and volatility, particularly for natural gas.