Individual

While overall production is flattening out, individual shale play areas in the Rockies will continue to grow, making the region the main future natural gas source for the West, according to Ultra Petroleum Corp. marketing vice president Stuart Nance.

At the first Capitol Hill hearing on the Deepwater Horizon rig oil spill, top executives with BP America Inc., Transocean Ltd. and Halliburton defended their individual company’s actions and pointed fingers elsewhere.

Pipeline customers who failed to get lower rates on Panhandle Eastern Pipe Lines’ Southwest Gas Storage service by filing their own Natural Gas Act (NGA) Section 5 complaint [RP07-34] several years ago, nevertheless may have laid the groundwork and inspired the strategy for a FERC surprise action last week that calls for formal investigations of three pipelines for possible over-recovery in their rates.

The emergence of gas shale plays has been a game-changer for the industry and the outlook for gas supply. The scale of the shales is so great that it threatens the survival of the “individual wildcatter,” who with only a half-dozen employees drilling a few dozen wells a year will find it difficult to compete, Chesapeake Energy Corp. CEO Aubrey K. McClendon said last Thursday.

The emergence of gas shale plays has been a game-changer for the industry and the outlook for gas supply. The scale of the shales is so great that it threatens the survival of the “individual wildcatter,” who with only a half-dozen employees drilling a few dozen wells a year will find it difficult to compete, Chesapeake Energy Corp. CEO Aubrey K. McClendon said Thursday.

Utility industry executives generally support some form of a federal climate bill, but the Waxman-Markey proposal may be “too aggressive” for some regions and some individual utilities in terms of meeting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction goals, according to Xcel Energy CEO Dick Kelly.

March natural gas futures continued to rebound Tuesday as traders began their individual expiration dances ahead of the contract’s termination Wednesday. The prompt-month contract pushed higher late in the regular trading session to close at $4.236, up 13.9 cents from Monday’s finish.

Sempra Energy’s Los Angeles-based Southern California Gas Co. announced Monday it has expanded it business energy efficiency programs, offering individual commercial/industrial (C/I) customers rebates of up to $1.2 million/customer. SoCalGas has 250,000 C/I customers.

Two Royal Dutch Shell subsidiaries and an individual crude oil futures trader have agreed to pay $300,000 to settle charges by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) of executing prearranged crude oil futures trades on the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex) on at least five occasions between November 2003 and March 2004.