Corner

After months of predicting that a price and drilling recovery was just around the corner, Canadian natural gas producers are setting aside forecasts and settling down to wait for markets to tighten up.

As California’s largest natural gas producer with a big bet on domestic oil/gas supplies, Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum has turned the corner financially with rapidly rising profits and stock prices, making it one of the top names on the energy industry’s acquisition target lists, according to a profile in the Sunday business section of the Los Angeles Times. The price for the company is growing, with its 70-year-old CEO Ray Irani telling the LA Times it could reach $40 billion.

Tucked away in the corner of the spacious and empty Long Beach Convention and Entertainment Center earlier this month, a joint federal-local port hearing on Japanese conglomerate Mitsubishi’s proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving terminal drew many community stakeholders, but only three independent citizens, none of whom objected to accelerated preliminary environmental review.

Tucked away in the corner of the spacious and empty Long Beach Convention and Entertainment Center last Thursday night a joint federal-local port hearing on Japanese conglomerate Mitsubishi’s proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving terminal drew many community stakeholders, but only three independent citizens, none of whom objected to accelerated preliminary environmental review.

Fueled by the abundance of liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving terminal proposals in the northwest corner of Mexico, the North Baja Pipeline reported Thursday that its six-month open season for expanded future capacity drew interest totaling about 5.5 Bcf/d. The current pipeline running from the Arizona-California border through the northern end of Baja California Norte is fully subscribed for its 500 MMcf/d capacity.

Fueled by the abundance of liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving terminal proposals in the northwest corner of Mexico, the North Baja Pipeline reported Thursday that its six-month open season for expanded future capacity drew interest totaling about 5.5 Bcf/d. The current pipeline running from the Arizona-California border through the northern end of Baja is fully subscribed for its 500 MMcf/d capacity.

Duke Energy found itself backed into a corner last week, facing criticims for new reports about a formal SEC investigation, its 71% drop in third quarter earnings and its announcement that it may have to take a $19 million special charge in the fourth quarter related to a settlement agreement that was filed Tuesday with North Carolina and South Carolina state regulators (see related story).

Is there any corner of the U.S. society that hasn’t been touched by the so-called “Enron Effect”? Even the nation’s “fourth estate,” daily newspapers, reported that business editors now are taking a new, harder look at the companies they cover to avoid any more surprises among bastions of commerce, according to a report in this week’s (March 11) newspaper industry magazine Editor & Publisher.

There were very few places outside the extreme southwesterncorner of the U.S. still seeing high temperatures any greater than70 degrees Tuesday, and the growing chill was manifested in furthergas price increases. Though milder than Monday’s gains and almostnon-existent in California and parts of the Rockies, the new pricehikes were generally on either side of a dime in the Gulf Coast,Midcontinent/Midwest and Northeast. Much like the day before,Northeast citygates tended to rise the most between 10 and 14cents.