Cutting

There was not a bit of cheer to be found in Raymond James & Associates’ outlook Monday for U.S. natural gas markets, with analysts cutting 2009 price forecasts to $5/Mcf from $6.75. U.S. producers may have to shut in around half, or 800 Bcf, of output in the coming year to balance the markets, said analysts.

The North American natural gas sector remains solid, and the economic problems cutting across the United States are unlikely to have much of an effect on the sector in the near term, according to Moody’s Investors Service.

The North American natural gas sector remains solid, and the economic problems cutting across the United States are unlikely to have much of an effect on the sector in the near term, according to Moody’s Investors Service.

Since its blockbuster acquisitions of Kerr-McGee Corp. and Western Gas Resources Inc. (see NGI, Aug. 28, 2006; June 26, 2006), Anadarko Petroleum Corp. has been on a divestiture tear, cutting down acquisition debt through multiple asset sales. So far, the company’s plan to end 2007 with $12 billion of debt is on track, according to analysts.

Dutch bank ABN Amro confirmed Friday it was closing down its trading operations involving natural gas, oil, and freight derivatives, cutting back to focus on its core markets of emissions and precious metals.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty has set a new aggressive energy savings goal of cutting the state’s fossil fuel use by 15% by 2015. Pawlenty believes the goal is achievable through energy efficiency and renewable resources, and he also raised the bar for renewables to 25% by 2025 from a previous goal of 10% by 2015.

When it comes to cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, targets and timetables are not the way, not for the United States and not for developing countries either, according to Harlan Watson, the Bush administration’s top international climate-change negotiator.

NGPL said pipeline replacement work on segment one in its Midcontinent Zone will further reduce pressure on its system, cutting capacity from an already reduced state. The pipeline expects a complete outage on that section of the system Nov. 16-17, affecting about 15 receipt/delivery points.

A security tape showing two people cutting a fence to scale a storage tank at KeySpan Corp’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) storage facility in Lynn, MA, last week has sparked a number of investigations at the local and state level, even though the incident appears to be an act of vandalism rather than terrorism, a company spokeswoman said.