Cause

An Alaska North Slope exploratory oil well that experienced “a shallow gas kick” Wednesday morning did not cause any injuries, but workers were evacuated as a precaution. The incident occurred at the Qugruk 2 drill site near Nuiqsut, about 625 miles north of Anchorage.

With most areas returning to seasonal or warmer-than-normal temperatures, the decline in heating load was sufficient to cause lower prices at all but three points Thursday. The relatively rare substantive gain of 10.3 cents by February futures a day earlier obviously had little impact in stanching the continued bleeding of cash prices.

The outlook for oil output from the Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas is strong enough to cause analysts at Wood Mackenzie to predict that it will rival the Bakken Shale by 2015 as North America’s leading tight-oil producer.

A lawsuit filed by Amaranth Advisors LLC claiming JPMorgan Chase & Co. executives helped to cause the natural gas hedge fund to collapse may not proceed, New York Supreme Court Judge O. Peter Sherwood has ruled. The hedge fund imploded in a $6.4 billion debacle in 2006 on bad bets on natural gas futures and derivatives deals. Amaranth sued the bank a year later for its alleged role in the fund’s demise, claiming that JPMorgan officials interfered in a deal with Citadel by disparaging Amaranth’s financial condition (see NGI, Nov. 19, 2007). In a 32-page ruling Sherwood said Citadel had “conducted its own research in connection with the proposed transaction with the fund and evidence of the tenuousness of the fund’s financial condition was readily available” (Amaranth LLC v. JPMorgan Chase & Co., No. 603756/2007, New York Supreme Court, New York County).

A lawsuit filed by Amaranth Advisors LLC four years ago that claimed JPMorgan Chase & Co. executives helped to cause the natural gas hedge fund to collapse may not proceed, a New York Supreme Court judge ruled on Friday.

A final federal regulatory report including the identification of the cause of the San Bruno, CA, gas pipeline rupture and explosion last year will be completed next month, according to senior officials at PG&E Corp.

A final federal regulatory report including the identification of the cause of the San Bruno, CA, gas pipeline rupture and explosion last year will be completed next month, according to senior officials at PG&E Corp.

The 2011 Atlantic hurricane season isn’t likely to produce as many tropical storms as 2010 but will still be “active,” and the storms it creates will probably cause more trouble for the U.S. coastline than last year, according to AccuWeather.com forecasters.

The 2011 Atlantic hurricane season isn’t likely to produce as many tropical storms as 2010 but will still be “active,” and the storms it creates will probably cause more trouble for the U.S. coastline than last year, according to AccuWeather.com forecasters.