Excess

Looking ahead over the next decade the natural gas industry can be characterized as having excess supplies of the commodity and infrastructure that will be searching frantically for added demand, an industry strategist told the LDC Gas Forum: Rockies & West meeting in Los Angeles Tuesday.

Looking ahead over the next decade the natural gas industry can be characterized as having excess supplies of the commodity and infrastructure that will be searching frantically for added demand, an industry strategist told the LDC Gas Forum: Rockies & West meeting in Los Angeles Tuesday.

After hinting for months that going big was the only way to accommodate excess ethane supplies in the Marcellus Shale, Williams on Tuesday proposed to build a large-scale natural gas processing and ethane project that would traverse the rich gas/dry gas divide in Pennsylvania.

Pittsburgh’s CONSOL Energy Inc., which has increasingly been focused on its Appalachian natural gas operations, agreed Thursday to sell Noble Energy Inc. half of its 663,350 net-acre leasehold in a portion of the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, including a half-stake in existing wells, under a multi-year transaction valued at $3.4 billion.

Thanks to colder-than-normal winter weather, which sucked up some excess natural gas supplies, Raymond James & Associates Inc. has lifted 2011 gas price forecasts by 50 cents to $4.25/Mcf.

Thanks to colder-than-normal winter weather, which sucked up some excess natural gas supplies, Raymond James & Associates Inc. on Tuesday lifted 2011 gas price forecasts by 50 cents to $4.25/Mcf.

During the first quarter predominantly shale gas-focused EXCO Resources Inc. produced more and sold it for less. The company had planned to do the former and is making the best of the latter, said CEO Doug Miller, who told financial analysts Wednesday that “it’s hard to put lipstick on this pig.”

Excess hydroelectric supplies in the West should cut natural gas demand by one-third through August, according to a market alert released Wednesday by energy consultant Bentek Energy LLC. Forward gas prices in the western United States and Canada are overvalued as a result of demand loss that Bentek calculates to be 295 Bcf.

While still posting in excess of $1 billion in profits for all of last year, San Francisco-based PG&E Corp. reported Thursday that it took $283 million, or 43 cents/share, in charges for its utility’s fatal San Bruno transmission pipeline rupture last September.