Headed

Dominion CEO Thomas F. Farrell II warned last week that the United States “is headed for an energy train wreck” if the country does not create a national energy policy “grounded in economic realism, common sense and market principles.”

Dominion CEO Thomas F. Farrell II warned Monday that the United States “is headed for an energy train wreck” if the country does not create a national energy policy “grounded in economic realism, common sense and market principles.”

It’s still pretty cold in most market areas and temperatures are headed lower again Friday in the Midwest, but some moderation from the ice storm that descended on much of the U.S. earlier in the week, combined with Wednesday’s 40.4-cent dive by February futures and growing use of storage in lieu of new purchases of spot gas, allowed cash prices to continue their descent at all points Thursday.

Despite eleventh-hour negotiations, House and Senate leaders headed home for the November elections without reaching a compromise on legislation to open up more of the federal offshore to oil and natural gas leasing. The Republican leadership is expected to take up the issue of coastal drilling in the lame-duck session, which — depending on the outcome of the elections — could make a deal even more elusive.

Despite eleventh-hour negotiations, House and Senate leaders headed home for the November elections without reaching a compromise on legislation to open up more of the federal offshore to oil and natural gas leasing. The Republican leadership is expected to take up the issue of coastal drilling in the lame-duck session, which — depending on the outcome of the elections — could make a deal even more elusive.

Last week’s announcement by Chesapeake Energy Corp. that it would pay multiple sellers a combined $932 million for 67,000 net acres of Barnett Shale leasehold turned up the heat on the hottest gas play in the country. Consolidation has clearly come to the 13-county area around Fort Worth, where costs have skyrocketed to as much as $5,000/acre from just $50 two years ago. But the players keep coming because in the Barnett you make your money through the drillbit, and even a high ticket price can be dwarfed by future profits.

In spite of bearish EIA storage figures, natural gas futures turned tail and headed higher in active inventory report-driven trading Thursday on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The EIA reported withdrawals from working gas inventory tallied a miserly 23 Bcf, below the ICAP options auction consensus of 25.5 Bcf, and short of a Reuter’s survey of 22 analysts and traders that predicted a fall of 31 Bcf. Bentek Energy of Colorado calculated a withdrawal of 40.9 Bcf in its Wednesday Daily Market Summary.

In some of the most damaging testimony so far in the trial of Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay and ex-CEO Jeffrey Skilling, David Delainey, who once headed the wholesale gas trading unit, testified Tuesday the company played “fast and loose” with accounting rules, and financial tricks were “standard operating procedure.

Abandoned by members of Congress, who left a lot of low-income energy users out in the cold as they headed for their own home holiday fires, natural gas end users are turning to federal agencies to stem the tide of high prices.