Lift

High U.S. commodity prices helped lift BP Plc to a record quarterly profit. Tuesday, the company announced its first quarter adjusted replacement cost net profit before goodwill of $4.126 billion, up 52% from a year ago. However, BP, ranked third in the world, did not exceed its earnings forecast of $3.56-$4.23 billion — a feat accomplished by leaders Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch/Shell Group.

High U.S. commodity prices helped lift BP Plc to a record quarterly profit. Tuesday, The company announced its first quarter adjusted replacement cost net profit before goodwill of $4.126 billion, up 52% from a year ago. However, BP, ranked third in the world, did not exceed its earnings forecast of $3.56-$4.23 billion — a feat accomplished by leaders Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch/Shell Group.

Citing forecasts of moderating Midcontinent temperatures,Williams said it will lift a systemwide OFO this morning. The OFOwas issued Dec. 16 (see Daily GPI, Dec. 19).

Since notching a $2.12 low during the first week of this year,the natural gas futures market has shown a propensity to look pastvirtually all bearish information and focus on anything out therethat is remotely bullish. Witness yesterday, when prices sank earlyon fizzled hurricane fears only to rebound fiercely as tradersrallied natural gas in sympathy with spiking crude oil prices.

Natural gas futures eked out its eighth-straight daily gainyesterday as traders erased early foray into negative territorywith storm-related buying in the afternoon. The September contractled the charge, advancing 4.9 cents to finish at $4.468. Estimatedvolume was light as only 58,956 contracts changed hands.

Except for smaller price increases, cash trading Tuesday wasalmost a repeat of Monday’s. Small upticks of about a nickel orless dominated in the East and were mostly associated with thescreen’s late run-up Monday, sources said. Slightly larger gains atmost western points got extra support from cooling load that wasconcentrated in the hot east-of-California markets of the desertSouthwest.

Major and independent gas producers last week commended FERC fortaking steps to reinstate its authority to make well determinationsso that qualified producers can obtain Section 29 tax credits forhigh-cost gas wells. But they urged the Commission to extend thedetermination process to all qualifying wells, irrespective ofwhether the wells were spudded and/or recompleted pre-Jan. 1, 1993or whether they were recompleted after Dec. 31, 1992.

Those who expected the swing cash market to use Mondayafternoon’s cash run-up and continued futures strength Tuesdaymorning as a springboard were not disappointed. Late-March quoteswere moving higher by double-digit amounts at nearly every point inall market areas, although few increases exceeded 10-12 centsexcept in the Rockies and Northeast.

Effective today, Kern River will lift all restrictions on firmservice that had resulted from this week’s Muddy Creek maintenance.IT service will resume as scheduled Saturday.