Breathed

Powder River Basin producers breathed a collective sigh of relief after the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) issued its long awaited final decision on the environmental impact of a massive increase in coalbed methane drilling in the basin in Wyoming and Montana. About 14,300 wells already have been drilled on the Wyoming side of the basin, but producers needed BLM authorization to move forward with a 10-year plan to drill another 39,400 gas wells. In Montana, the BLM looked at the potential of more than 26,000 wells across the entire state.

Investors in Allegheny Energy no doubt breathed a collective sigh of relief last Tuesday after the company and its Allegheny Energy Supply Co. said that they have entered into agreements with lenders on new and restructured credit facilities totaling $2.4 billion.

The New England natural gas market breathed a sigh of relief last week when the U.S. Coast Guard lifted its ban on liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers into Boston Harbor, clearing the way for Distrigas of Massachusetts LLC to receive overseas’ shipments once again at its Everett, MA, terminal.

Fresh life is being breathed into a decades-old Canadian visionof a mammoth production and pipeline project to tap Arctic naturalgas reserves. For the first time in nearly a decade, theproduction community, with help from a U.S. producer, is revivingexploration on its formerly most dramatic frontier. A Canadiangovernment auction of drilling rights drew takers for 2,934 squarekilometers (1,132 square miles) of the Mackenzie Delta-Beaufort Searegion. Initial work is expected to start within a year. TheNorthwest Territories awarded the rights as four nine-year resourcehunting licences, in exchange for C$183 million (US$122 million) inwork commitments by four producers with a penchant for chasing biggas targets.

Fresh life is being breathed into a decades-old Canadian visionof a mammoth production and pipeline project to tap Arctic naturalgas reserves. For the first time in nearly a decade, theproduction community, with help from a U.S. producer, is revivingexploration on its formerly most dramatic frontier. A Canadiangovernment auction of drilling rights drew takers for 2,934 squarekilometres (1,132 square miles) of the Mackenzie Delta-Beaufort Searegion. Initial work is expected to start within a year. TheNorthwest Territories awarded the rights as four nine-year resourcehunting licences, in exchange for C$183 million (US$122 million) inwork commitments by four producers with a penchant for chasing biggas targets.

As Tropical Storm Bret was downgraded from hurricane statusMonday, offshore producers in the western region of the Gulf ofMexico breathed a major sigh of relief. Their personnel andplatform facilities had completely escaped Bret’s wrath over theweekend, with producers reporting no damages and only nominalvolumes of shut-in production.

Producers active in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, which is fastbecoming the most prodigious play in the nation, breathed acollective sigh of relief last week when FERC gave WyomingInterstate Co. Inc. (WIC) the go-ahead to construct its MedicineBow connecting lateral that will enable it to tap into thebountiful coal-bed methane (CBM) reserves in the region. Withoutit, producers said they would be forced to shut in production ofCBM gas for the long term.

Brokers and speculators (at least some, anyway) may havebreathed a collective sigh of relief on Wednesday, as volatilityreturned to the New York Mercantile Exchange. The April contractfinally broke out of the tight $2.105-205 trading range that hadbeen containing its movements since March 6 by virtue of its 8.4cent rise to $2.239. Sources agreed the activity was led byanticipatory buying ahead of the release of the latest AGA storagereport. “It was more buy based on rumor today, but the rumor wasstrong enough to drive April above major resistance at $2.205,” oneof the sources told NGI.