Hurricane

New Jersey Natural Gas (NJNG) reported Tuesday that it is making steady progress in restoring service to its hurricane-ravaged distribution system, as well as repairing the facilities.

By a narrow margin, voters Tuesday elected President Obama to a second term in office, but with Congress still split — a majority Republican House and a majority Democratic Senate — the passage of significant legislation relating to the energy industry or anything else remains problematic.

The latest word from New Jersey Natural Gas (NJNG) is that the entire natural gas distribution system on the barrier island has been compromised, officials of hurricane-ravaged Seaside Heights, NJ, told residents of the borough on its website.

Taking cover from what the news media is describing as the “Frankenstorm,” which is what is expected to result when Hurricane Sandy veers onshore into the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast and collides with a cold front from the West, trading exchanges announced their modified operating plans on Sunday.

In what it said would be its final update of evacuation and shut-in production statistics related to Hurricane Isaac, the Bureau of Safety Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) said Tuesday that two production platforms and a single rig remained evacuated in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM). Based on data from offshore operator reports submitted as of 11:30 a.m. CDT Tuesday, BSEE estimated 4.73% (213 MMcf/d) of natural gas production and 4.16% (57,439 b/d) of oil output in the GOM was shut in. All of those statistics peaked in the immediate aftermath of Isaac, when BSEE reported 509 production platforms and 50 rigs evacuated, and an estimated 75.52% (3.264 Bcf/d) of gas production and 94.99% (1.311 million b/d) of oil production was shut in (see Daily GPI, Aug. 31).

Hurricane Irene turned out the lights on millions of East Coast residents and in doing so cut demand for natural gas by about 2.8 Bcf, according to an analysis by Bentek Energy LLC. The firm on Aug. 29 said the storm dropped gas demand by 1.3 Bcf in the Northeast since the previous Saturday (Aug. 27) and another 0.8 Bcf of demand loss was expected. About 0.7 Bcf of demand had been lost in the Southeast. Analysts at Canaccord Genuity Inc. also noted the storm’s gas demand destruction. “…[G]as-fired generation has declined by 2-plus Bcf/d over the past couple days, with the heaviest declines, not surprisingly, occurring in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic regions,” the firm said. “At the same time, precautionary refinery shutdowns in conjunction with activity-limiting flooding suggest industrial demand is likely to see some degradation in these regions as well. Putting it all together, Irene was clearly a net bearish event for the gas complex and, depending on the length of outages, will likely lead to a cumulative natural gas demand loss of 30-plus Bcf over the next couple [of] weeks.”

Hurricane Irene turned out the lights on millions of East Coast residents and in doing so cut demand for natural gas by about 2.8 Bcf, according to an analysis by Bentek Energy LLC.

Anticipating limited operational flexibility to manage positive imbalances in downstream Zones 4, 5 and 6 due to possible impacts of Hurricane Irene, Tennessee issued an Imbalance Warning to become effective Saturday in those zones. All delivery point operators are required to keep actual daily takes out of the system equal to or greater than scheduled quantities regardless of their cumulative imbalance position, while all zone receipt point operators must keep actual daily receipts into the system equal to or less than scheduled quantities regardless of their cumulative imbalance position.

Encana Corp. and ExxonMobil Corp. on Thursday separately suspended operations at two natural gas prospects that are offshore Nova Scotia (NS) to prepare for the arrival of Hurricane Earl.