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December natural gas rose Tuesday on extremely light volume as traders scrambled to determine positions and locate funds in the aftermath of the MF Global trading debacle. At the close December had risen 4.9 cents to $3.745 and January had gained 4.0 cents to $3.843. December crude oil added $1.28 to $96.80/bbl.

Chevron Corp. said last Thursday it has the support of the Mississippi governor for a new LNG import terminal it plans to locate in Jackson County, MS, alongside its Pascagoula refinery on the Gulf Coast. The announcement followed the revelation earlier in the week it had put its more ambitious Port Pelican offshore terminal on hold.

Chevron Corp. said Thursday it has the support of the Mississippi governor for a new LNG import terminal it plans to locate in Jackson County, MS, alongside its Pascagoula refinery on the Gulf Coast.

El Segundo, CA-based Unocal Corp. said Wednesday that it has yet to locate an Era Aviation helicopter that went missing Tuesday night around 7:15 p.m. CST. The producer lost contact with the Sikorsky S76 helicopter while it was en route to a drilling location in the Gulf of Mexico.

Coral Energy and Shell Trading U.S. are planning to co-locate their operations in Coral’s offices in downtown Houston. It is not a merger, a company spokesman said, and the units will not combine operations. Coral, which markets natural gas and power, and Shell Trading, which markets oil and products, will shed some of their combined 1,200-member workforce where there is redundancy. The cutback will be accomplished through voluntary actions, retirements, normal attrition, and relocations within the corporation.

After failing to locate a purchaser for Canadian-based energy trader Engage Energy, Duke Energy confirmed last week that it has decided to close down the division and consolidate some of its operations. The Canadian natural gas and power marketing operation was a division of Westcoast Energy, which Duke purchased in March (see NGI, March 11).

Escopeta Oil & Gas and BBI Inc. of Houston reported that they have received new seismic reprocessing results that show estimated recoverable reserves of 12 Tcf of natural gas near the East Forelands area of Alaska’s Cook Inlet Basin, at depths of 18,000 to 21,000 feet. The companies said known producing horizons in the same structural trend would likely recover 1.35 billion bbl of oil and an additional 6.1 Tcf of gas.

Escopeta Oil & Gas and BBI Inc. of Houston reported that they have received new seismic reprocessing results that show estimated recoverable reserves of 12 Tcf of natural gas near the East Forelands area of Alaska’s Cook Inlet Basin, at depths of 18,000 to 21,000 feet. The companies said known producing horizons in the same structural trend would likely recover 1.35 billion barrels of oil and an additional 6.1 Tcf of gas.

Osprey Energy, headquartered in Bridgewater, NS, has begun an extensive onshore seismic program to locate potential oil and gas deposits north of Truro, NS. Osprey and its joint venture partner will conduct a month-long program over an 80-mile stretch from Debert to Parrsboro, part of the Maritime Basin, with the primary target the 70 kilometers of seismic lines in the Pennsylvanian Parrsboro formation. Early indications are that the region has potential reserves of up to 75 MMbbl and 345 Bcf. The area to be covered includes the Lower Parrsboro formation, which is about 850 meters thick, consisting of sandstone and shale. The Upper Parrsboro is about 1,800 meters thick and is similar to the Lower Parrsboro. The seismic program is gathering 6,000% fold vibroseismic data, which has been contracted to Kinetex Inc. The data will be analysed to create a subsurface geological profile, which will be integrated with surface geological data gathered over several years by the Geological Survey of Canada and the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources.