Exited

Anschutz Exploration Corp. has exited the Bakken Shale play after closing the sale of its remaining operated and nonoperated oil and gas producing properties in the Williston Basin, including undeveloped acreage, to an undisclosed Canadian oil company for $115 million. The deal comes less than a year after the company sold 180,000 net acres to Oxy USA in December 2010 for $1.4 billion.

Having exited the global trading space and facing merchant power markets that are problematic, San Diego-based Sempra Energy will be placing renewed emphasis on its varied natural gas investments along with its California and foreign utilities. That was the essence of presentations at the energy holding company’s financial analysts’ meeting last Wednesday in New York City.

Having exited the global trading space and facing merchant power markets that are problematic, San Diego-based Sempra Energy will be placing renewed emphasis on its varied natural gas investments along with its California and foreign utilities. That was the essence of presentations at the energy holding company’s financial analysts’ meeting Wednesday in New York City.

Southern California Gas, which recently exited a segment outage on Line 4000 that caused a 700 MMcf/d reduction of border receipt capacity (see Daily GPI, Dec. 7), said it will isolate the line again Friday from Newberry to Main Line Valve 12 (a total of 36 miles) to repair a leak. The will cause a one-day capacity loss of 690 MMcf/d at the Topock, North Needles and Questar border points, leaving total combined throughput not to exceed 650 MMcf/d, SoCalGas said.

With a revamped business model designed to focus on natural gas processing, Oneok Inc. officially exited the power business Friday with the sale of its Spring Creek plant in Logan County, OK to Westar Energy Inc. for $53 million. The transaction will result in a 3Q loss in discontinued operations, but improved gas processing spreads and higher commodity prices will push Oneok’s quarterly income and earnings well ahead of forecasts, the company said Friday.

Prices exited last week in much the same fashion they had spent the previous four days: falling at nearly all points, with a few scattered flat numbers thrown into the mix. Friday’s softness was anticipated because of generally weak cooling load outside the Southwest, a bearish storage report Thursday and the lack of any viable tropical storm threats to offshore production.

While the April futures contract exited quietly on Monday, the May contract began its prompt-month run Tuesday like a rock band, jumping 26.4 cents on the day to close at $5.746. After notching a high of $5.775 at 12:37 p.m. ET, the May contract stayed above $5.70, moving up to test the $5.77 mark a number of other times during the afternoon.

Winter hasn’t exited the seasonal weather stage quite yet, but looks like it might be getting ready for its final curtain call. Most of the coldest remaining temperatures are in northern New England and ranging from the Upper Plains through the Rockies.

Adding its name to the lengthy list of marketers that have exited Georgia’s retail gas market, Energy America, Centrica’s U.S. retail gas marketing subsidiary, said last week that it is calling it quits after struggling to build its customer base there last year and then being hit with a fine and other penalties last month by the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) for slamming.