Doing

The heads of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Thursday told BP plc CEO Tony Hayward his company is not doing enough to disclose information about the company’s leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) and its efforts to contain the disaster.

French-based exploration/production company Total SA, just as many of its major global competitors in the traditional energy sector are doing, is branching out to the alternative energy space as a response to climate change policies pushing to shrink the world’s carbon footprint.

French-based exploration/production company Total SA, just as many of its major global competitors in the traditional energy sector are doing, is branching out to the alternative energy space as a response to climate change policies pushing to shrink the world’s carbon footprint.

Some of the biggest natural gas producers in North America are doing what needs to be done to cope with low commodity prices and tight credit markets. Anadarko Petroleum Corp. has dropped around 30% of its U.S. onshore rigs since the end of 2008, the company said last week. And XTO Energy Inc. is slicing $1 billion from its capital expenditures (capex) for 2009.

Some states and private landowners are doing a better job than the Interior Department at spurring swifter development of oil and natural gas leases, according to a report issued by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) last Tuesday. While part of this is due to the fact that states and private landowners face fewer restrictions (particularly on the environmental front) than Interior, the agency said states also are more actively providing producers with incentives to encourage rapid development.

Getting a major boost from the expiration-day spike of 35.2 cents by July futures, most of the cash market was able to advance Friday. In doing so, it overcame bearish influences such as forecasts of declining temperatures in much of the East and the usual weekend dropoff in industrial load.

Enterprise Products Partners LP reported record profit in the final three months of 2007, but unexpected construction and start-up delays at two of its high-profile Rocky Mountain natural gas processing facilities resulted in lower-than-expected earnings.

Following repeated failed attempts to bust out to the upside earlier in the week, exhausted traders were comfortable with doing not much of anything in quiet trading on Friday. After trading lower in the overnight Thursday Globex session, December natural gas maintained a slim 14-cent range Friday before closing at $7.794, down 16.1 cents on the day and 9 cents lower than the previous week’s close.

The natural gas integrity management program, implemented under the Pipeline Safety Improvement Act of 2002, is still in its early stages, but it appears to be doing its job to improve pipeline safety nationwide, according to a 21-page report issued Friday by the General Accounting Office (GAO).