Depends

Whether the U.S. gas market will receive an infusion of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the coming years depends a lot upon what happens in European gas markets, according to an executive with a Gulf Coast regasification terminal developer.

Analysts last week predicted steep declines in gas storage levels, welcome news for an industry that had been choking on inventory while it waited for winter to finally show.

Successful natural gas futures trading often depends on correctly determining what “story” the market is telling on a particular day, according to Sandy “Trot” Goldfarb, a 20-plus-year trading veteran. Speaking at NGI’s Natural Gas Futures Prices Workshop at the New York Mercantile Exchange last week, Trot said the plot of recent price movements indicates that there could be more room to the upside in this market.

Although the E&P software and services business is abillion-dollar-a-year industry, more than half of the world’sgeoscientists are not using currently available computer technologyto evaluate prospects, according to Bob Stevenson, president ofE&P software provider Geographix, a Houston-based subsidiary ofLandmark Graphics.