Losing

After losing nearly a dollar in value in a week, dropping to $6.689 Thursday from $7.651 on Wednesday, Aug. 9, near-month gas futures staged a somewhat surprising reversal on Friday on technical factors and in response to an increase in tropical activity. The September contract soared to a daily high of $7.090 just after 1 p.m. before backtracking to end the day up only 4.2 cents at $6.731.

In a world of “internationalizing” national oil companies (NOCs), the terms “major” and “super major” are quickly losing their meanings.

After losing more than 30% of its natural gas volumes, or 1.4 Bcf/d of supply on its 500 and 800 pipelines following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGPL) has repaired almost all of its main lines in the Gulf of Mexico and made “significant progress” on other pipeline recovery efforts. Based on the timelines for processing plant availability announced by various operators, Tennessee said it expects to have on-system processing capable of handling about 550,000 Dth/d of flow on the 800 line and up to 800,000 Dth/d of flow on the 500 line by the second half of December.

Having lost prior-day screen support Monday and being on the verge of losing some cooling load in the Great Lakes market area Wednesday, prices fell across the board Tuesday. The fact that an expected warming trend in the Northeast is slow in developing also contributed to a bearish cash market mood.

Losing both a bit of air conditioning load and residual futures support, prices saw double-digit declines that ranged as high as half a dollar at a majority of points Tuesday. The West, where a heat wave has come on strongly in a region that had experienced mostly cool to moderate temperatures prior to this week, and the still-torrid Midcontinent cornered the market on points that were flat to less than a dime lower.

Municipals on the losing end of a price spike sparked by an erroneous storage report petitioned FERC commissioners Friday to act immediately to require daily storage reports. Joining industrial and chemical customers who issued their protests a day earlier, the American Public Gas Association (APGA) said consumers will pay almost a billion extra dollars for their natural gas in December due to the incorrect report, which was released just prior to Thanksgiving (see Daily GPI, Dec. 3).

Municipals on the losing end of a price spike sparked by an erroneous storage report petitioned FERC commissioners Friday to act immediately to require daily storage reports. Joining industrial and chemical customers who issued their protests a day earlier, the American Public Gas Association (APGA) said consumers will pay almost a billion extra dollars for their natural gas in December due to the incorrect report, which was released just prior to Thanksgiving (see Daily GPI, Dec. 3).

Despite losing three production platforms to Hurricane Ivan, Noble Energy said Wednesday it expects its third-quarter production from continuing operations to be up about 17% to 104,400 boe/d compared to 3Q2003. Production from continuing operations for the year is expected to increase 15-16% because of its Phase 2A condensate expansion project in Equatorial Guinea, gas sales in Israel and increased domestic production.

To no one’s surprise, prices extended their losing streak since midweek into the weekend with across-the-board declines. Below normal temperatures in most areas outside the West Coast and Southwest, storage-related futures weakness the day before, and the continuing recovery of Gulf of Mexico production from storm shut-ins made Friday’s softening a foregone conclusion, sources said.