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President Bush’s State of the Union address Tuesday night was notable more for what it didn’t say on energy policy — it failed to make any reference to domestic oil and natural gas drilling.

Dominion experienced a rupture Saturday on a 20-inch supply line to one of its storage facilities in Harrison County, WV. The blast occurred in a remote area and didn’t cause a fire or injuries, a spokesman said. The line was isolated shortly afterwards, and because it wasn’t a residential line, no one lost service, he said. The pipeline was continuing an investigation into the cause of the incident Monday.

For the first time this year, California had a full complement of governor-appointed energy regulators last week, and they didn’t delay getting on the job, following the May 2 announcement from California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, selecting his chief energy adviser as the new chairman of the California Energy Commission (CEC) and a former Reagan administration treasury official and international banker as the fifth member of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC).

Proving that Hurricane Ivan’s lasting effects on Gulf of Mexico production didn’t go unnoticed by traders, the October natural gas futures contract on Tuesday spent the day exploring resistance levels following its gap higher at the open.

It didn’t take long for “storm hype” to get blown away as a price booster. Even with Minerals Management Service (MMS) reporting that more than 2 Bcf/d of Gulf of Mexico production was shut in Wednesday due to the proximity of Tropical Storm Bonnie, all points fell between a dime and about a quarter in cash trading.

The cash market didn’t have far to go in seeking support for a broad-based rally Monday. It found backing in several areas: new spikes throughout the energy futures complex (which likely will be reflected in physical gas even more strongly Tuesday); a past-due surge of cooling load ranging from Texas and the lower Midcontinent through the Southeast and into the Mid-Atlantic; a major production outage in the Gulf of Mexico; and the usual restoration of industrial load that tends to get dampened over a weekend.

This week may have started Monday with rising prices like the previous one, but it didn’t take long for the two market paths to diverge. Quotes kept ascending through Thursday of last week, but on Tuesday of this week they were already in full retreat in most areas.

They didn’t make up all the ground lost in Friday’s plunge, but prices did see solid across-the-board rebounds Monday. Sources cited the continuing creep eastward in the northern tier of states of cold weather that had been confined to the West last week as a significant factor, but also mentioned delayed influence from a screen surge Friday and the return of industrial load following a weekend.

The bears didn’t waste much time Tuesday evening. Minutes after Claudette was downgraded to a tropical storm, traders took the bull by the horns and were able to steer prices in overnight Access trading below key technical and psychological support at $5.00. When the regular, open-outcry session opened Wednesday morning, there was little question which direction prices were headed.