Explosive

MarkWest Energy Partners is getting ready for “explosive growth” in the Northeast “in 2013 and beyond,” CEO Frank Semple said Thursday. Next year, natural gas liquids (NGL) processing in the Marcellus and Utica shales combined should increase to 4.8 Bcf/d from 2.7 Bcf/d to serve producer customers.

Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) has postponed until Friday the release of a highly explosive bill that would require major swap dealers to separate their derivatives businesses from investment bank activities; would provide a “narrow exemption” to bona fide hedgers of the requirements for mandatory trading and clearing of over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives; and would increase the enforcement authority of regulators.

Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) has postponed until Friday the release of a highly explosive bill that would require major swap dealers to separate their derivatives businesses from investment bank activities; would provide a “narrow exemption” to bona fide hedgers of the requirements for mandatory trading and clearing of over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives; and would increase the enforcement authority of regulators.

In some of the most explosive testimony in the nine-week-old fraud and conspiracy trial of Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay and ex-CEO Jeffrey Skilling, former treasurer Ben Glisan Jr. last week told jurors Lay and Skilling lied on several occasions to investors and analysts about the true financial condition of the company. In one instance, Glisan recounted how Lay asked him to determine Enron’s total 3Q2001 losses by first determining what amount would lower the company’s credit rating.

In some of the most explosive testimony against Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay, ex-treasurer Ben Glisan Jr. on Wednesday told jurors Lay was in charge of a financial scheme in late 2001 in which he asked Glisan to determine Enron’s total 3Q2001 losses by first determining what amount would lower the company’s credit rating.

In some of the most explosive and combative testimony to date in the trial of Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay and ex-CEO Jeffrey Skilling, ex-CFO Andrew Fastow testified last week that Skilling used off-the-book partnerships to illegally revise earnings beginning in 1999, and told jurors that Lay not only knew about the financial shenanigans before the company dissolved into bankruptcy but also actively took part in deceiving shareholders and the news media.

“Explosive” growth by the infant of the Canadian natural gas industry, coalbed methane, will raise total production this year — and again in 2006 and ’07 — by more than making up for declines in conventional supplies, the National Energy Board predicted Monday. The limiting factors are the size of the drilling fleet and experienced people to operate the rigs.