Halted

Traders halted the recent free fall in prices on Friday as August natural gas futures registered a low of $6.660 on the day before settling at $6.773, up 11.8 cents from Thursday but 48.7 cents lower than the previous Friday’s close. Whether the day’s trading marked a change in philosophy, or merely a rest stop on the way to even lower price levels, remains to be seen.

Given that the Port of Long Beach has halted further review of the project, FERC last Wednesday asked SES Terminal LLC to justify why the agency should continue processing the company’s application for its proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal to be sited in the harbor, a project that has been troubled from its very inception in 2004.

Given that the Port of Long Beach has halted further review of the project, FERC Wednesday asked SES Terminal LLC to justify why the agency should continue processing the company’s application for its proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal for the Port of Long Beach, CA, a project that has been troubled from its very inception in 2004.

Prices for merchant power assets appear to have halted a three-year free fall and more than 100,000 MW of electricity generating capacity — the amount bought and sold over the past three years — is expected to change hands in the coming 12 to 18 months, according to “Terra Firma: Merchant Power Plant Prices Hit Bottom,” a new research report by Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), an IHS company.

A Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) $1.2 billion bond sale to cover infrastructure upgrades and a natural gas reserve purchase was halted Tuesday by the city council, sending the proposed sale back to the city-run utility for reworking. The action, along with the LADWP oversight board being in transition, could postpone the sale for weeks if not months, a utility official conceded Wednesday.

Imperial Oil Ltd. and cosponsors of the proposed C$7 billion Mackenzie Delta pipeline have halted their work because of what they said was a lack of progress to move the development forward. The announcement is considered a major setback for development of the Mackenzie project, which would bring new supplies of gas from the Canadian Arctic to southern Canada and the Lower 48.

Stopping the rally from last week at least temporarily, August natural gas futures on its way towards expiration dropped 17.7 cents on Monday to close at $5.957. The drop almost erased last Thursday’s 22.1-cent rally, which was sparked by the first bullish natural gas storage report in many weeks (see Daily GPI, July 23).

A federal district judge in Washington, DC, last week stayed a prior decision ordering the Bush administration to turn over by Tuesday additional documents and records of a number of federal agencies who sat on the task force that crafted the national energy strategy three years ago.

A federal district judge in Washington, DC, has stayed a prior decision ordering the Bush administration to turn over by Tuesday additional documents and records of a number of federal agencies who sat on the task force that crafted the national energy strategy three years ago.