Handful

Drilling success in the promising Cotton Valley Trend in East Texas and northern Louisiana by a handful of large and small exploration and production (E&P) companies is piquing a lot of interest — and not only because of the natural gas being discovered there.

Two of the major exchanges trading natural gas, the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex) and the IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) are among a handful of exchanges in the U.S. and Europe that have been discussing possibly purchasing the New York Board of Trade (Nybot), according to an article Thursday in The Wall Street Journal. The article, based on sources, said two exchanges are still in talks, but it did not say which two. Nybot, which has floor-based trading of some agricultural products, would be a good fit with either CBOT Holdings, owner of the Chicago Board of Trade, or ICE, because Nybot has a clearing business, WSJ went on to say. Nybot has space on Nymex’s trading floor in Lower Manhattan.

Barely three years after a handful of producers began booking small reserves additions, the infant Canadian coalbed methane sector has earned respect in a new report on the national gas endowment by industry elders. The Canadian Gas Potential Committee, a powerhouse composed of veterans from agencies such as the Geological Survey of Canada and the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board, recognized 26 Tcf of CBM as “marketable,” up from zero in the group’s last report in 2001.

A handful of prevention and mitigative strategies would limit the exposure of other liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities to the “cascading events” that caused the deadly explosion at the LNG complex in Skikda, Algeria earlier this year, according to a joint report by the Department of Energy (DOE) and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

A handful of prevention and mitigative strategies would limit the exposure of other liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities to the “cascading events” that caused the deadly explosion at the LNG complex in Skikda, Algeria earlier this year, according to a joint report by the Department of Energy (DOE) and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

The construction of just two to three new liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals, along with the planned expansions of the existing import facilities in the United States, would provide a “significant incremental addition in gas supply” over the next few years, said an official with the American Gas Association (AGA) Wednesday.

Detailed and recorded trader tapes show that a handful of Texas utility companies, led by TXU Corp., are gaming the state’s electricity market, using the same types of schemes exposed in the California and Enron crises to reap windfall profits at the expense of Texas consumers and smaller competitors, bankrupt Texas Commercial Energy (TCE) alleged last week.

Only a handful of utilities in southern and southwestern U.S. states are “likely” to avoid the adverse effects on natural gas demand that the coming El Nino is expected to produce this winter, according to a new report by Williams Capital.

In speeches marked with impressive statistics from Rocky Mountain producers and a handful of protesters objecting to one of Tuesday’s luncheon speakers — Interior Secretary Gale Norton — the 13th Annual Rocky Mountain Natural Gas Strategy Conference took the high road last week, with speakers touting social and environmental responsibilities as the keys to sustainable shareholder profit in the future.