henry hub

Pennant Midstream LLC said Monday that its $375 million Hickory Bend Processing Plant and wet-gas gathering system is fully operational, with company officials expecting the plant to begin accepting natural gas and natural gas liquids (NGL) by the end of the first quarter.

Winter storm Hercules, which produced record cold in areas of the United States and dropped more than a foot of snow in the Northeast, dominated the attention of gas traders for the holiday-shortened Dec. 31-Jan. 3 trading week. While a number of regions surveyed saw small declines in average prices for the week, stout gains in the East pushed NGI’s Weekly Spot Gas Average up 94 cents to $5.41/MMBtu with a wide range of individual trades from $1.50 at Tranco-Leidy Line to $39.00 at Transco Zone 6-NY.

Dena E. Wiggins, a veteran proponent of natural gas industrial customers, is moving over to serve producers as president and CEO of the Natural Gas Supply Association (NGSA). Wiggins was elected by the NGSA board of directors recently and will join NGSA in late February. “Dena is a recognized expert and champion of natural gas issues in the public and regulatory arena, as well as highly experienced in the association business,” said Greg Vesey, chairman of NGSA and vice president of gas supply and trading for Chevron. “Throughout her career, Dena has skillfully navigated the way to success for her positions, forming coalitions and achieving consensus as needed. That combination of knowledge and skill make her a great choice to lead NGSA.” Wiggins has been a longtime leader of the Process Gas Consumers (PGC) group, which was strongly allied with producers through deregulation and open access battles over the last 30 years. She will be leaving her career as a partner at Ballard Spahr law group in Washington, DC, and with the PGC. Wiggins succeeds Skip Horvath, who is retiring from NGSA this spring.

Physical natural gas trading for weekend and Monday delivery seemed to resemble two Sumo wrestlers vying for supremacy with clashing weather-driven market forces from the Midwest grappling with offsetting market factors in the East.

UGI Corp. subsidiary UGI Energy Services LLC has placed its newly-constructed 28-mile gathering pipeline and compressor station into full service. The Auburn pipeline extension provides gas supplies to local consumers in Pennsylvania, while also providing access to interstate markets for Marcellus Shale producers. The $160 million, 20-inch pipeline will initially deliver 200 MMcf/d of locally produced natural gas through UGI Energy’s Manning compressor station in Wyoming County, PA. to UGI Penn Natural Gas Inc., one of that company’s utilities and the interstate pipeline Transcontinental.

Enterprise Products Partners LP said transportation services for shippers that executed long-term agreements supporting its Mid-America Pipeline (MAPL) Rocky Mountain expansion project began Thursday. The project accommodates natural gas and natural gas liquids (NGL) production from major basins in Utah and Wyoming. Several new gas processing plants have been constructed in the Uinta and Greater Green River basins that will benefit from the expansion, which added 265 miles of 16-inch diameter pipeline to the MAPL system and raised capacity from 275,000 b/d to 350,000 b/d.

A long-running dispute between Patriot Water Treatment LLC of Warren, OH, and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources has been revived with the decision from an Ohio Appeals Court in December that Ohio’s Court of Claims must consider a lawsuit filed by the company in November 2012 that seeks $3.5 million in damages from the regulatory agency.

With a far-reaching blizzard and record-setting cold moving out of the Midwest and into the Northeast Thursday, it came as no surprise that January natural gas bidweek prices not only shot higher, but in at least one instance reached a record high.

Anadarko Petroleum Corp.has been revealed as the seller of some natural gas-weighted properties in the Pinedale Anticline and Jonah field to a unit of Vanguard Natural Resources LLC for $581 million (see Shale Daily, Dec. 30, 2013). Vanguard confirmed the seller in a required Securities and Exchange Commission filing; it was advised on the sale by Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. Inc. The transaction would nearly double Vanguard’s reserves, with daily output increasing by 55%.