henry hub

North America proved a winner for Schlumberger Ltd. in the third quarter, with revenue rising 7% sequentially, an all-time high, and margins expanding 57 basis points (bps), or 0.57%, to reach 20.3% on a year/year basis. New shale technology tested in several basins helped to lower drilling costs, and it’s now being given a look in other areas.

The average U.S. rig count in the final three months of this year should decline by about 2.5% from 2Q2013, a typical seasonal slowdown around the holidays, and above the pronounced drop in the same period of 2012, when the rig and well count fell by more than 5%, Baker Hughes Inc.’s CFO said Friday.

An anti-shale drilling protest in New Brunswick turned violent Thursday after authorities moved in to enforce an injunction to end an ongoing demonstration.

With natural gas-fired and renewable generation assets as an attraction, Princeton, NJ-based NRG Energy Inc. said Friday it has entered a $2.5 billion “planned sponsor agreement” with Edison Mission Energy (EME) and some of its subsidiaries to eventually acquire the Chapter 11-mired independent power generation company. NRG said it hopes to close the acquisition in the first quarter next year.

FERC Friday approved Texas Eastern Transmission’s (Tetco) and Algonquin Gas Transmission’s request to place into service an expansion of their systems that would deliver 800,000 Dth/d of Marcellus Shale gas to markets in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut.

In the midst of many unsettled regulatory permitting issues from the local to federal levels, the two proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) export projects in Oregon are stepping up the pace of their marketing efforts for both customers and gas suppliers to their envisioned tolling facilities.

Tennessee Gas Pipeline and Texas Eastern Transmission are ready to “let ‘er rip” Nov. 1, opening up more than 1.4 Bcf/d of new pipeline capacity to New York, New Jersey and New England.

Natural gas prices for Friday physical delivery on average fell 9 cents in Thursday’s trading. It was a tale of two coasts as West Coast points suffered hefty double-digit losses within a weak power environment and a nominal weather outlook. East Coast locations were mixed with prices a few pennies on either side of unchanged.

A New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) plan to have ratepayers subsidize the cost to build new natural gas-fired power plants has been ruled unconstitutional by a judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.