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By nearly every financial measure, ConocoPhillips is in enviable shape with a debt-to-capital ratio at 19%, an ongoing share buyback program, dividend payouts and strong quarterly earnings. Even so, there’s likely to be few, if any, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) announced this year, CEO Jim Mulva said Wednesday.

With a stated goal of offering people within the energy industry a way to reduce the burden of rolling index commodities forward every month while also allowing them to track the effects of contango and backwardation in the crude markets, the New York Mercantile Exchange Inc. (Nymex) said last week that it plans to launch the MACI futures and the Backwardation-Contango index futures contracts in February 2008.

With a stated goal of offering people within the energy industry a way to reduce the burden of rolling index commodities forward every month while also allowing them to track the effects of contango and backwardation in the crude markets, the New York Mercantile Exchange Inc. (Nymex) said Monday it plans to launch the MACI futures and the Backwardation-Contango index futures contracts in February 2008.

As temperatures moderated across the country, almost every cash market point across the country saw a significant double-digit cent decline Friday except for a few Rockies points, which enjoyed small rebounds following a deep plunge Thursday.

Nearly $25 billion will be devoted to deepwater development every year between 2008 and 2012, and the North American region will account for more than 25% of the spending, according to a study by energy consultant Douglas-Westwood Ltd.

Attempting to ascertain how much natural gas is being traded by every single energy merchant in North America is a gambler’s game at best. Trends, however, are another story, and in a review of 1Q2007 gas marketing data, the Barnett Shale and the Rocky Mountains appear to be making an impact, albeit small, on the markets.

Attempting to ascertain how much natural gas is being traded by every single energy merchant in North America is a gambler’s game at best. Trends, however, are another story, and in a review of 1Q2007 gas marketing data, the Barnett Shale appears to be making an impact, albeit small, on the markets.

The cash market continued its break from the pattern of mixed pricing that prevailed every day last week. The direction of price movement was uniform at all points again Tuesday, but this time it was down instead of up. Moderating weather trends in the Midwest, to be duplicated to a lesser extent over the rest of the week in the Northeast, combined with the pre-existing scarcity of heating load in the South to ease overall spot gas demand.

Fewer natural gas reserves are being added in North America for every dollar of exploration and production (E&P) activity, and higher costs undermine the economics of an increasing number of wells, according to an analysis of full-cycle cost data for all wells drilled in 2005. Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) and IHS also found a dramatic shift toward unconventional gas production, which two years ago already accounted for nearly 25% of total output.