Kept

McMoRan Exploration Co., which has kept investors dangling with promises that its Davy Jones natural gas discovery in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) would be flowing 50 MMcf/d by now, saw its shares plunge by more than 20% on Monday and another 15%-plus early Tuesday after the company admitted that it still is struggling to bring the prospective well online.

By a narrow margin, voters last Tuesday elected President Obama to a second term in office, and kept Republicans in control of the House of Representatives and Democrats in the majority in the Senate. By maintaining the status quo in Washington, DC, this may ensure that the stalemate over energy policy will continue for another four years.

The proliferation of rail-based crude oil transport in the Bakken Shale and elsewhere has not gone unnoticed by pipeliner Enbridge Inc. “It’s an agile…way of getting to market,” Enbridge’s Stephen John Wuori, president of the liquids pipeline business, said. However, “…rail movements can and will get turned off in a day if differentials collapse.”

High winds kept crews for a unit of Chesapeake Energy Corp. from bringing under control a runaway natural gas well that has been spewing gas and drilling mud since Tuesday near the town of Douglas, WY, in part of the Niobrara Shale formation in Converse County.

Transco Zone 6’s New York pool topped out at $13 and averaged nearly $12 Friday amid mixed price movement in most regions as traders kept in mind that the Sunday-through-Tuesday flows covered by their deals would be accompanied by the advent of frigid weather in much of the East. Several other Northeast points had peak quotes of $10 or more.

The approach of colder temperatures that would take Friday lows into the 30s in the Northeast kept spot prices rising in that region Thursday. But most other areas succumbed to predictions of weekend warming trends and the previous day’s 9.3-cent futures drop in recording lower quotes.

Although small losses were slightly dominant, a sizeable number of flat to modestly higher locations kept cash market movement mixed Monday. Most severely hot weather with triple-digit highs was still confined to the south-central and Southwest sections of the U.S., and although the South could expect to keep peaking in the low to mid 90s, that represented merely seasonal to slightly below-normal conditions for August.

Rockies Express (REX) said an outage of one unit at Bertrand Compressor Station experienced Thursday kept it unavailable Friday although repair crews worked on resolving the issue. However, at the current level of scheduled quantities (both Intraday 1 and Timely) through Segment 250, scheduling reductions were not necessary Friday, REX said, but if nominations increase for future cycles, a force majeure may be required.

Southern California Gas (SoCalGas) kept a high-linepack OFO in place through Sunday, then allowed it to expire Monday. SoCalGas also said it lost 100 MMcf/d of North Needles border delivery capacity Sunday for an undetermined amount of time when it declared a force majeure at the receipt point in order to replace a piston on the #1 unit.