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The physical natural gas market on average moved a penny lower Wednesday, as buyers seemed content with mild weather to rely mostly on baseload volumes. Points in and around the Great Lakes were up by a couple of pennies and around the Gulf, prices held within a 2-cent range of unchanged. Rockies points were mostly unchanged as well. Futures gained on light volume as players positioned themselves ahead of Thursday’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) storage report. At the close of trading, June futures had risen 5.8 cents to $3.978 and July closed 5.6 cents higher at $4.030. June crude oil gained $1.00 to $96.62/bbl.

The University of Texas at Austin has pulled a 2012 UT Energy Institute report that was supportive of hydraulic fracturing and shale gas development following a review of the study by an independent panel that found researchers failed to disclose a conflict of interest.

It was a tale of two markets Tuesday as cash prices were content to trade within about a two-cent range on either side of unchanged and futures traders covered short positions at the end of the session.

Gastar Exploration Ltd. will devote $100.5 million of its $134.2 million 2012 capital budget to drilling and completion costs, with 89% of that amount ($88.9 million) to be spent on activities in the liquids-rich window of the Marcellus Shale, the company said Tuesday.

The Utica Shale could be more profitable than the Marcellus Shale, but it could also prove to be more challenging, a Consol Energy Inc. executive suggested at a conference in Pittsburgh on Thursday.

The Texas Senate Wednesday evening unanimously passed legislation to require disclosure of the contents of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) fluid, “breaking ground that no other state has done,” according to state Sen. Troy Fraser (R-Horseshoe Bay). However, a floor amendment could thwart the bill’s progress.

Participants in the Canadian energy industry are signaling that its switch of drilling targets to oil and natural gas liquids (NGL) will continue and accelerate.

Given the difference in prices for natural gas liquids (NGL) and dry gas, NGL content in the Eagle Ford Shale “makes for a much more pleasant experience” for producers there, Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP (KMP) Chief Rich Kinder told financial analysts Wednesday. And burgeoning activity in the South Texas play has filled up a KMP midstream project there.

Given the difference in prices for natural gas liquids (NGL) and dry gas, NGL content in the Eagle Ford Shale “makes for a much more pleasant experience” for producers there, Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP (KMP) Chief Rich Kinder told financial analysts last week. And burgeoning activity in the South Texas play has filled up a KMP midstream project there.