Justify

The industry-led Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC) has canceled a study underway by Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) about natural gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking), following criticism that previous research had a pro-drilling slant.

According to Canadian economic studies, natural gas prices have fallen far enough to justify fuel conversions of industrial engines, and a top supplier has set out to lure business consumers into making the switch on a large scale.

According to Canadian economic studies, natural gas prices have fallen far enough to justify fuel conversions of industrial engines, and a top supplier has set out to lure business consumers into making the switch on a large scale.

Strange creature, this spot gas market. Prices rise for two days when generally mild weather doesn’t appear to justify it; then when heating load-boosting cold either begins to show up or is in the next-day forecasts, the climb falters Wednesday and all trading locations but one drop. Only two of the declines were by less than double-digit amounts.

North Dakota continues to set all-time records for oil and gas production based on the most recent statistics available as of the end of October, according to Lynn Helms, director of the state Industrial Commission’s Department of Mineral Resources (DMR). He noted that the oil and gas industry still plans to invest more than $3 billion in the state through 2013.

Current weather didn’t seem cold enough to justify the substantive gains realized Tuesday at nearly all points as many — but not all — traders returned to their offices from the Christmas holiday weekend. They may have been stocking up a bit in looking forward to the first week of January, when some predict a boost in heating load from the return of cold weather.

There didn’t seem to be enough weather-based demand — for either heating or cooling — to justify it, but prices were up fairly strongly across the board Monday. The cash market did derive minor support from the previous Friday’s 5.2-cent uptick by June futures and the restoration of industrial load from its usual weekend decline.

This week’s market started out much like the previous one — with seemingly not enough cold weather overall to justify big price jumps, but traders managed to find enough demand anyway to drive spikes that occasionally reached about a dollar or more Monday.

In spite of another prior-day futures decline, the cash market found enough cold weather in the forecast to justify increases at most locations Thursday.