henry hub

Two weeks after raising its U.S. natural gas price deck due to slightly better fundamentals, analysts with Fitch Ratings on Wednesday made the bold statement that they expect natural gas prices to be rangebound over the “next few years.”

The elephant named Marcellus that has been sitting on Northeast-Henry Hub basis isn’t about to move along, and what used to be a premium market will see trades discounted to the U.S. gas benchmark for a while, analysts at Credit Suisse said in a note Tuesday.

Pioneer Natural Resources Co.(Pioneer) andPioneer Southwest Energy Partners LP(Pioneer Southwest) have struck an agreement for their previously announced merger under which Pioneer Southwest would become a wholly owned subsidiary of Pioneer operating companyPioneer Natural Resources USA Inc.(seeShale Daily,May 13). The transaction is intended to consolidate the West Texas Midland Basin activities of the two companies and facilitate Pioneer’s plans to fully and optimally develop the area utilizing horizontal drilling. The combination is expected to provide organizational, operational and administrative efficiencies, Pioneer said. Pioneer Southwest’s public unitholders are to receive 0.2325 of a share of common stock of Pioneer per Pioneer Southwest common unit surrendered, plus a whole share of Pioneer common stock in lieu of any fractional share of Pioneer common stock otherwise issuable in the merger. The transaction is expected to result in 3.95 million additional shares of common stock being issued by Pioneer.

Private equity (PE) continues to put a bead on funding U.S. exploration and production (E&P) companies, and there appears to be a lot more money available than ever before, unconventional operators said at the Colorado Oil & Gas Association’s Rocky Mountain Energy Summit in Denver.

Natural gas and oil companies concerned that fringe protesters will succeed in delaying or canceling projects shouldn’t be, said the chief scientist for The Nature Conservancy. New technology eventually will be embraced, he said, but it will take time.

FERC last Monday ordered BP America Inc. and affiliates to show cause in a long-running case [IN13-15] involving the alleged gaming of the physical and financial markets at the Houston Ship Channel (HSC). The Commission proposed a near-$29 million penalty for transactions taking place from mid-September 2008 through Nov. 30, 2008.

State regulators and alternative fuel advocates are increasingly finding that the roads are getting crowded with natural gas vehicle (NGV) proposals as the transportation sector tries to make more use of abundant U.S. supplies. Oregon, Texas and Utah are the latest to extend their push to expand the market for NGVs.

A veteran researcher at the National Regulatory Research Institute (NRRI) is urging state regulators and utility managers to pay more attention to “lost” natural gas, both from a safety standpoint and because of costs.

Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP and MarkWest Utica EMG LLC (MarkWest Utica) are putting up a $2 billion y-grade natural gas liquids (NGL) processing and transportation combo project that competes with the Bluegrass Pipeline, which has been proposed by Boardwalk Pipeline Partners LP and Williams.