Knocking

Natural gas-hungry Japan is knocking on Alaska’s door, but the world’s third-largest economy won’t wait forever for liquefied North Slope gas — or pay dearly for it. The message to state lawmakers and the energy industry: hurry up with cost-competitive supply — or you’ll add even more years to the decades-long effort to commercialize those long-stymied gas reserves.

A deep freeze named Brutus hammered North Dakota with a pre-winter force in November, knocking down oil and gas production from all-time record levels the previous month, according to the latest statistics from the state Department of Mineral Resources (DMR).

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.

Traditional allies find themselves knocking heads at the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) over a proposal by Sempra Energy’s Southern California Gas Co. (SoCalGas) utility to establish a special compression tariff and services for natural gas vehicle (NGV) fueling stations. Seal Beach, CA-based Clean Energy Fuels Corp. is alleging that the SoCalGas plan is anti-competitive.

After knocking on the psychological resistance door three times earlier this month, natural gas bulls finally reached $5 and settled above it on Monday as the July contract recorded a $5.013 high before closing out the regular session at $5.006, up 22.5 cents from Friday’s finish.

Westcoast notified shippers Wednesday that a force majeureoccurrence knocking out all processing capacity at its Pine RiverPlant had been resolved and processing was back to normal. Theplant experienced a total PLC (programmable logic controller)failure Monday afternoon, but the problem was fixed Tuesdayevening, Westcoast said.