Halt

Feeling rooked by Canadian Superior’s announcement last week of a halt operations at the El Paso Mariner I-85 well in the Atlantic Ocean off Nova Scotia, following 3-1/2 months of drilling, a number of class action lawsuits have been filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on behalf of purchasers of the securities of Canadian Superior Energy Inc.

Thursday’s halt by Northern Natural Gas of a System Overrun Limitation notice that had been in effect for two and a half weeks lasted only one day. The pipeline declared a new SOL for all market-area zones effective Friday.

As some had expected, this week’s running of the bulls ground to a halt Thursday, weakened by yet another larger than normal September storage injection and modified predictions of colder near-term weather. A few scattered points were close to flat, while the majority fell from about 3 cents to nearly 15 cents.

Except for a few flat to slightly lower Northeast citygates and western points, most of the cash market continued to build on Wednesday’s advance with further large gains Thursday. And sources said that with the dazzling 38-cent spike in futures, it’s a pretty safe bet to expect more strength in cash numbers for the weekend.

This week’s upward march in prices didn’t end Wednesday but did come to a near-standstill. Only Rockies gains of 8-15 cents or so stood out from the vast majority of points that ranged from flat to up about a nickel. Most of those rose less than a nickel, and small declines at about half a dozen scattered points figured into the mix.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) asked a federal court last week to put a halt to the General Accounting Office’s (GAO) legal pursuits to gain access to the Bush administration documents and records of the activities of the high-profile task force that formulated the president’s national energy policy last year.

Minnesota-based Cargill Inc. has asked FERC to issue a cease-and-desist order to stop Saltville LLC, an affiliate of Duke Energy and NUI Corp., from carrying out the allegedly “unlawful construction” of a jurisdictional salt cavern storage facility without certificate authorization from the Commission.

Minnesota-based Cargill Inc. has asked FERC to issue a cease-and-desist order to stop Saltville LLC, an affiliate of Duke Energy and NUI Corp., from carrying out the allegedly “unlawful construction” of a jurisdictional salt cavern storage facility without certificate authorization from the Commission.

Higher production volumes weren’t enough to halt the earnings decline stemming from substantially reduced prices among independent oil and gas producers in the third quarter, according to Energy Performance Review, which maintains a line-of-business financial and operating database.