Fields

Shell Exploration & Production Co. (SEPCo) said late Friday that its Crosby and Einset subsea fields located in the Gulf of Mexico are now online and sending production to their hub platforms. SEPCo indicated that the Crosby development is the first subsea tieback to Shell’s Ursa tension leg platform.

The industry picked a good year to fill up the nation’s gas storage fields. This winter could be bitter cold, according to two major weather outlooks released last week by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Salomon Smith Barney Meteorologist Jon Davis. Both forecasts expect the winter to be colder than normal with temperatures similar to last winter on average but with significant swings in temperatures and precipitation.

Clayton Williams Energy Inc., an independent headquartered in Midland, TX, has closed the sale of oil and gas assets in three East Texas fields to Samson Lone Star Ltd. Partnership. The assets were purchased in 1998 from Sonat Exploration Co. for approximately $46.5 million. Clayton Williams owned 10% of the assets and a subsidiary was general partner for a limited partnership with an affiliate of GE Capital Oil & Gas, which owned the remaining 90%. Under the limited partnership agreement, Clayton Williams’ general partnership interest increased to 35% from 1% after the limited partner received a pre-agreed rate of return. Clayton Williams plans to use the net proceeds from the sale, estimated to be $15.8 million, to reduce its outstanding bank debt and for general corporate purposes. The company also expects to report a third quarter gain of about $10.5 million on the transaction.

MDU Resources Group, the diversified utility headquartered in Bismarck, ND, said it does not expect to meet its forecasts of $2.30-2.50 per earnings share for this year, and will see “significantly” lower earnings than the predicted $2.60 in 2002 because of the volatility in natural gas prices and a downturn in the economy. Still, MDU said it would stay the course on its long-term goal of an earnings per share growth of 10-12%, as well as a projected 30% increase in combined natural gas and oil production this year.

While still holding out the carrot of a possible 40-well, 3 Tcf natural gas play in the agricultural fields west of the central California valley town of Delano, Tri-Valley Corp. of Bakersfield announced that it has a letter of intent to sign a deal with an unnamed, privately held international energy company that wants to develop the prospective gas field in conjunction with building a baseload merchant electric generating plant. Tri-Valley called the field its Sunrise Natural Gas Project.

While still holding out the carrot of a possible 40-well, 3 Tcf natural gas play in the agricultural fields west of the central California valley town of Delano, Tri-Valley Corp. of Bakersfield announced Wednesday that it has a letter of intent to sign a deal with an unnamed, privately held international energy company that wants to develop the prospective gas field in conjunction with building a baseload merchant electric generating plant. Tri-Valley called the field its Sunrise Natural Gas Project.

Sonat said it anticipates storage injections will exceed thedaily capacity of its storage fields this week. The weatherforecast is for a continued warming trend through Friday, andinstead of receipt nominations going down they actually went up forthe gas day of Wednesday, the company said. If Southern does notsee a reduction in receipt nominations for Thursday’s gas day it ishighly likely that it will have to implement an OFO.

After defaulting on multiple contracts last July during a periodof extreme power prices and taking huge losses to make up for theproblem, Cinergy considered getting out of trading entirely.However, it ended up scaling back its national operations to aregional focus and it brought in a large new team of moreexperienced players.

After defaulting on multiple contracts last July during a periodof extreme power prices and taking huge losses to make up for theproblem, Cinergy considered getting out of trading entirely.However, it ended up scaling back its national operations to aregional focus and it brought in a large new team of moreexperienced players.