Characterized

After what it has characterized as a successful, targeted use of automatic meter reading (AMR) technology in remote, hard-to-access areas, Las Vegas, NV-based Southwest Gas Corp. late last month announced it intends to totally automate more than 1.7 million natural gas meters in the three principal metropolitan areas it serves in Nevada and Arizona. Southwest expects to complete the installation in 2009.

In another trading day characterized as quiet by sources, cash numbers were about flat to nearly 30 cents higher Monday. However, only CIG achieved the approximate 30-cent increase; other gains were capped at around a dime, and a majority of points were up by about a nickel or less.

Cabot Oil and Gas took issue with the negative way in which it’s 2002 financial and performance results were characterized in a story that ran in Daily GPI on Feb. 25. Although Cabot’s net income per share declined to 65 cents last year from $1.71 the prior year, its fourth quarter net income per share was up to 36 cents from to a loss in 4Q2001 of 34 cents. The company also showed strong performance results. “When you look at year over year, it was not as good as the year before in terms of dollars. But in terms of production, we produced a double digit production jump of 12%, we had our second highest level of discretionary cash flow and we reduced debt by $28 million,” said Cabot spokeswoman Karin Thorton. “Those are all positive.” Lower realized commodity prices were the main factor in the decline in reported results, the company said. Its average realized natural gas price fell more than 30% in 2002 to $3.02/Mcf compared to an average realization of $4.36/Mcf in 2001. Oil prices declined from $24.91 to $23.79 per barrel. For 2002, Cabot reported equivalent production of 91.1 Bcfe, compared to 81.1 Bcfe produced in 2001.

In what was often characterized as a quiet trading day, prices were flat to mildly higher Tuesday in the East and moderately softer at most western points. Gains were capped at 5-6 cents, while Rockies and San Juan Basin declines of about a dime topped the losses.

Having characterized the nation’s major energy firms as “failing miserably” to deliver promised increased cash flows from merchant energy businesses, most of the private-sector energy companies were blistered last Thursday by critical Standard & Poor’s analysts who conducted a conference call on the global utilities/energy merchant sector. The same firms with aggressive diversification plans five years ago, today for the most part, are “desperately trying to unwind” those businesses in response to a severe liquidity and capital crisis, triggered by the plunge in their stock prices, the analysts said.

A Houston-based source characterized the situation: “People just have no idea where this market is going to settle.” That was telling it like it is Friday, as the July aftermarket began substantially below first-of-month indexes and even further removed from end-of-June pricing.

“The market is tanking. That pretty well sums it all up in anutshell,” was how a Gulf Coast marketer characterized the pricesituation Wednesday. Only California, where a series of rollingblackouts began in the northern part of the state (see related story), failed to participate infurther price declines that were mostly between about a quarter and 50cents.

Unlike the East-West divergence in price movement thatcharacterized the first two trading days of the week, all marketswere on the same page Wednesday. Price increases ranged from abouta nickel to 20 cents, with most of them in the vicinity of a dime.

The head of a major pipeline trade group wrote a biting letterto BP Amoco CEO Sir John Browne that characterized the Natural GasSupply Association (NGSA) as a dangerous loose cannon whoseinterests are contrary to the rest of the natural gas industry.