Caused

Legal challenges and other obstacles have caused California to postpone for one year the implementation of its proposed carbon emissions cap-and-trade program, which was scheduled to start Jan. 1. Although still “on track” to begin next year, it has been put off until 2013, the regulator responsible for implementing the 2006 climate change law (AB32) told a state Senate committee Wednesday.

With a wee bit of help from prior-day screen firmness, gradually growing demand for power generation gas supplies to keep air conditioners running caused most cash market locations to realize substantive increases Tuesday. Even though odds of a Bay of Campeche low-pressure area becoming a named tropical storm didn’t get raised to 90% until well into the afternoon, just the chance of that happening so early in hurricane season may have been a modestly bullish factor to some traders.

Responding to a natural gas explosion that caused six deaths and multiple injuries last year at an electric power plant in Middletown, CT, the state’s House of Representatives on Thursday unanimously approved a bill that would ban the use of “flammable gas to clean or blow the gas piping” of electric generating facilities.

Getting an assist from the screen, moderately hot forecasts for much of the East and desert Southwest along with a patch of cold in the Rockies caused cash quotes to be flat to up by mostly small amounts at a large majority of points Thursday.

A rise in shale gas supplies and implications from last fall’s San Bruno, CA, pipeline rupture and explosion have caused California Energy Commission (CEC) planners to rethink their update of the state’s 2011 Integrated Energy Policy Report.

A rise in shale gas supplies and implications from last fall’s San Bruno, CA, pipeline rupture and explosion have caused California Energy Commission (CEC) planners to rethink their update of the state’s 2011 Integrated Energy Policy Report.

A rise in shale gas supplies and implications from last fall’s San Bruno, CA, pipeline rupture and explosion have caused California Energy Commission (CEC) planners to rethink their update of the state’s 2011 Integrated Energy Policy Report.

Severe weather conditions early this month caused a double whammy for the two interstate natural gas pipelines serving the Southwest, and the result was curtailments by some of the distribution utilities, particularly in New Mexico, representatives from Transwestern and El Paso Natural Gas pipeline units told a U.S. Senate energy committee informational hearing Monday in Albuquerque, NM.

March natural gas futures eased Tuesday as traders elected to discount both supportive weather reports and sharply higher oil prices caused by strife in North Africa and the Middle East. March fell 0.9 cent to $3.867 and April added 0.1 cent to $3.907. March crude oil bounded higher $7.37 to $93.57/bbl.