Creeping

A gas pipeline project from Alaska’s North Slope to Lower 48 markets is creeping toward dueling open seasons while the Mackenzie Gas Project (MGP) to tap the Canadian Arctic was recently pushed back another four years to 2018. Blame it on the regulatory process in Canada, TransCanada CEO Hal Kvisle told a Houston audience Wednesday.

A gas pipeline project from Alaska’s North Slope to Lower 48 markets is creeping toward dueling open seasons while the Mackenzie Gas Project (MGP) to tap the Canadian Arctic was recently pushed back another four years to 2018. Blame it on the regulatory process in Canada, TransCanada CEO Hal Kvisle told a Houston audience Wednesday.

A gas pipeline project from Alaska’s North Slope to Lower 48 markets is creeping toward dueling open seasons while the Mackenzie Gas Project (MGP) to tap the Canadian Arctic was recently pushed back another four years to 2018. Blame it on the regulatory process in Canada, TransCanada CEO Hal Kvisle told a Houston audience Wednesday.

With a modest (but expected to be brief) respite from harsh cold creeping into the forecasts for some areas, price advances slowed considerably at most points Tuesday and the formerly ultra-strong Northeast market was in wide retreat, with a few citygates seeing dollar-plus losses.

A bit of heating load may be creeping into cash market dynamics as overnight lows in the Rockies dip into the mid to upper 30s, and a few parts of the South may see a fair amount of power generation demand Thursday as highs around 90 are due in parts of Florida and the New Orleans area. Overall weather fundamentals remain on the light side for gas prices, but the market recorded increases at nearly all points Wednesday.

After putting in a new low for the move of $3.155 in morning trade, May natural gas futures ended up creeping higher from there for the remainder of Monday’s regular session before closing at $3.253, down 4.4 cents from Friday’s finish. Despite the fact that there is no bullish case anywhere to be found, traders and analysts warned that anything can happen Tuesday, which marks the May contract’s expiration.

With temperatures creeping slightly higher in several regions and some — albeit quite modest — prior-day screen support, cash prices managed to rebound by mostly moderate amounts at a solid majority of points Monday. The market also got a bit of backing from the return of industrial load from its typical weekend slump.

Demand destruction is creeping into the biggest emerging Canadian industrial natural gas consumer, Alberta oilsands operations. The biggest new development, Canadian Natural Resources’ (CNRL) 500,000 bbl/d Horizon Oil Sands Project, includes a C$1.4-billion (US$1.2-billion), long-range commitment to adopt “gasification” technology for making plant fuel from bitumen.