Entirely

Propelled almost entirely by the previous day’s 49-cent futures spike following a modestly bullish storage injection report, the cash market rose at nearly all points Friday. Although it was on the light side, residual heating load in Canada, the northern half of the U.S. and to some extent in the eastern end of the South provided auxiliary price support, and apparently the usual weekend decline of industrial demand had little impact.

With its commodities unit quadrupling its quarterly results, San Diego, CA-based Sempra Energy reported increased third quarter results compared to the same quarter last year after excluding numerous one-time items, such as a $189 million after-tax boost for outstanding litigation reserves.

After ignoring the price drops in the petroleum futures complex almost entirely on Tuesday, October natural gas futures couldn’t look away a second day in a row. In addition to petroleum weakness, prompt month natural gas was helped lower Wednesday by positive news from the Gulf of Mexico, settling at $11.201, down 45.6 cents on the day.

NGI sources generally were correct Thursday in predicting a moderate cash rally for Friday, but not entirely accurate. Prices fell at virtually all Northeast citygates Friday as a cold front took regional temperatures lower for the weekend, and at scattered points elsewhere. Otherwise quotes ranged from flat to as much as 20 cents higher.

Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP is holding an open season to test market interest in building an entirely new 700,000 Dth/d interstate pipeline that would transport growing gas production from the Bossier Sand and Barnett Shale exploration plays in northeastern Texas as well as imports from new LNG terminals along the Gulf Coast to pipelines in Louisiana.

Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP is holding an open season to test market interest in building an entirely new 700,000 Dth/d interstate pipeline that would transport growing gas production from the Bossier Sand and Barnett Shale exploration plays in northeast Texas as well as imports from new LNG terminals along the Gulf Coast to pipelines in Louisiana.

Industry analysts whose predictions were almost entirely out of the money on last week’s storage injection have offered various explanations for the big dip in the numbers announced by the Energy Information Administration (EIA). The consensus of prognosticators had centered around a mid-80s Bcf build, so the 72 Bcf that EIA said was injected into underground natural gas storage for the week ended July 16 came as a shock.

Industry analysts’ weekly gas storage predictions were almost entirely out of the money last week and many were left scratching their heads following the Energy Information’s (EIA) estimated 72 Bcf injection for the week ended July 16 after two prior storage reports of 109 and 108 Bcf.

Federal review of all future energy mergers for compliance with antitrust laws will rest entirely with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), according to a memorandum of agreement (MOA) worked out between the FTC and the Department of Justice’s antitrust division.