Experienced

Sonat experienced an unscheduled outage on the 14-inch Logansport Line in northwestern Louisiana. Effective Wednesday until further notice, it is unable to accept nominations for the J. W. Gathering receipt point. Sonat said Wednesday it is still evaluating repairs for the Bayou Postillion Line (see Daily GPI, Feb. 13).

In sympathy with a late rally experienced by the rest of the energy complex, natural gas futures surged higher into the close Monday, as speculative fund and local traders covered shorts and propelled the market to its fourth-straight gain. After gapping lower at the opening bell, the momentum quickly turned in bulls’ favor as buyers stepped up and pressured the March contract through key technical levels at $2.16 and $2.21. Sellers backed away once the market had pierced $2.21, leaving buyers little choice but to bid up the market higher. The March contract finished at $2.286, up 9.5 cents or 4.3% for the session.

Saying its capacity is fully utilized, warmer weather is being experienced in the market area and overall linepack is lower, Florida Gas Transmission issued an Overage Alert Day notice Monday with 15% tolerance for negative daily imbalances.

Despite the volatility the natural gas market has experienced over the last few weeks, Anadarko CEO Robert J. Allison, Jr. assured attendees at the tenth annual John S. Herold Pacesetters Energy Conference in Greenwich, CT, that his company has not made any major changes in its business plan. He added that just like they always do, “gas markets will self-correct.”

Despite the volatility the natural gas market has experienced over the last few weeks, Anadarko CEO Robert J. Allison, Jr. assured attendees at the tenth annual Herold Pacesetters Energy Conference in Greenwich, CT that his company has not made any major changes in its business plan. He added that just like they always do, “Gas markets will self-correct.”

Noting that at the end of August it had experienced significant long imbalances after posting the final cash-out index, Sonat said Wednesday that “similar economic conditions exist this month.” Shipper were advised to monitor the bulletin board for possible issuance of a Type 6 OFO for the weekend if flowing supply levels and demand cause Sonat to exceed its maximum storage injection capability.

Transco said Monday it had “Transco experienced significant positive transportation imbalances (receipts in excess of deliveries) on its system over the past weekend and expects this to continue through the end of September as a result of low gas prices.” Effective immediately, it is not allowing receipt make-up nominations unless they are sourced from the Washington or Eminence storage fields. Transco urged shippers to avoid any positive imbalances and to actively resolve any existing ones as soon as possible. It also said it will limit positively scheduled imbalances at all pooling points to a tolerance of 1% or 1,000 dekatherms, whichever is greater. Shippers with negatively scheduled imbalances at their pools will continue to be held to a 4% tolerance level. Transco may proactively decrease deliveries into the pools to bring them in line with receipts away from the pooling points.

The struggle experienced by some electronic trading systems in the face of stiff competition from IntercontinentalExchange, EnronOnline, TradeSpark and other systems isn’t stopping E-lecTrade from launching its own power trading system this summer. The system is unique, however, in its effort to provide multiple structured power transaction types and risk management services real time and on an anonymous basis.

Many energy stocks experienced another day of declines yesterday in reaction to FERC’s western power price mitigation order, while the stocks of some generators, marketers and utilities rebounded slightly as investment bankers attempted to put a positive spin on the expected impact of the order. Reliant fell 1.3% to $33.35. AES lost 51 cents to close at $42. El Paso was down 1.2% to $54.72, and Dynegy was down 33 cents to $44.05. But Williams gained a nickel to end the day at $35.21 and Enron rebounded from a new 52-week low to close out at $46.18, up $1.48.