Excellent

Exploration and field development in the largest continuous shale oil play in the Lower 48 states, the Bakken Shale in North Dakota and Montana, will be guided by new geo-models developed with funding from the Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy (FE).

Former New York Gov. George Pataki said Thursday he supports shale gas and hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in the Empire State’s portion of the Marcellus Shale, calling its development “the right thing to do.”

Sempra Energy LNG inked a letter of intent with BPMigas, Indonesia’s executive agency for oil and gas, and BP Indonesia Thursday to purchase liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies from Indonesia to be delivered to its planned terminal in North Baja California, Mexico. Top government energy officials from Mexico, Indonesia and the U.S. endorsed the agreement which was signed near the end of the two-day LNG Ministerial Summit in Washington, DC, last week.

The power delivery system in Texas is in “excellent” shape compared with other states, but that said, reducing transmission constraints remains key to continued reliability, according to the latest study by the state’s grid operator, the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). As ERCOT noted, most of the additional transmission facilities it expects to need in the next few years would be required whether or not the state had chosen to deregulate its electricity market because of growth in major regions, as well as strong demand.

Forecasting an excellent 2001, Houston-based Ocean Energy outlined its latest forecast Thursday, and announced it has completed the acquisition of Texoil Inc., which is expected to greatly impact 2001 operations.

Forecasting an excellent 2001, Houston-based Ocean Energyoutlined its latest forecast Thursday, and announced it hascompleted the acquisition of Texoil Inc., which is expected togreatly impact 2001 operations.

Coastal’s Wyoming Interstate Co. has completed construction ofits Medicine Bow Lateral pipeline and begun moving gas. “Wereceived excellent customer response to this project from the verybeginning, and we now are ready to move more of their Powder RiverBasin gas to market,” said Jon Whitney, CEO of Colorado InterstateGas (CIG), which operates Wyoming Interstate (WIC).

Gas pipeline industry lobbyists are missing out on an excellentopportunity in the power generation market to promote greaterexpansion of the pipeline network, says Commissioner Brent Alderferof the Colorado Public Utlities Commission. And the power industryas well is overlooking the importance of gas pipelines indistributed generation in creating greater power reliability.

Thursday was an excellent day to pursue a sell-early, buy-latestrategy in the Gulf Coast, according to a marketer. He saw TranscoStation 65, Henry Hub and TGT SL uniformly start around $2 even,then get up to $2.03 before falling back to the mid $1.90s in lateactivity. He thought the early cash strength was based on thescreen rising a few cents, but a lack of fundamental demand failedto support the upticks