Better

Canadian natural gas exports took a sharp turn for the better in the opening month of the new sales contract year last November. Deliveries to the United States rose by 4.5% to 312 Bcf from 299 Bcf in November of 2001, according to records kept on the trade by Canada’s National Energy Board.

Canadian natural gas exports took a sharp turn for the better in the opening month of the new sales contract year last November. Deliveries to the United States rose by 4.5% to 312 Bcf from 299 Bcf in November of 2001, according to records kept on the trade by Canada’s National Energy Board.

The new Congress with slim Republican majorities in each house has a better chance to pass a trimmed down energy bill or to sneak through an Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) drilling bill in the next two years, according to Slade Gorton, a former three-term Republican senator from the state of Washington.

The new Congress with slim Republican majorities in each house has a better chance to pass a trimmed down energy bill or to sneak through an Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) drilling bill in the next two years, according to Slade Gorton, a former three-term Republican senator from the state of Washington.

Standard & Poor’s issued a warning Thursday that more credit rating declines and possible defaults “loom on the horizon” even though the industry already has experienced its sharpest credit slide in decades.

No longer believers in the Enron Corp. energy trading mantra that “bigger is better,” Mirant Corp. and Reliant Resources Inc. executives said Thursday that the focus now is on cash — finding it, paying off debts with it and keeping as much of it as they can. They both conceded that for them, anyway, physical gas trading has not become a cash cow.

No longer believers in the Enron Corp. energy trading mantra that “bigger is better,” Mirant Corp. and Reliant Resources Inc. executives said Thursday that the focus now is on cash — finding it, paying off debts with it and keeping as much of it as they can. They both conceded that for them, anyway, physical gas trading has not become a cash cow.

Potential rewards for improved disclosure of company operations and finances can revitalize investor confidence, leading to higher valuations, less stock price volatility, more long-term investment and a lower cost of capital, according to a survey of natural gas and oil producers and investors by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

With its upstream production doing better than anticipated, Calgary-based Petro-Canada plans to increase its capital spending program for western Canada, the Mackenzie Delta and along the East Coast, where it has assets in White Rose and drilling prospects along the Scotian Shelf. Second quarter earnings were down from a year earlier, mostly on lower oil and gas prices, but its production more than doubled for the period, fueled by an international acquisition as well as its Terra Nova asset.