Losing

Ending the streak of losing sessions at two, natural gas futures held on to an early advance Wednesday as light short-covering buoyed the market on expiration day. The February contract completed its tenure as Nymex prompt month at $5.775, up 5.9 cents for the session, but down 46.8 cents since its debut as the spot contract a month ago.

Ongoing third quarter earnings were $409 million, or $1.21 a share, down from $459 million, or $1.43 for the same period of 2001. On Oct. 10, management had announced earnings guidance for the quarter would be about $1.05 (see NGI, Oct. 14). However, CEO E. Linn Draper said Friday that earnings were higher than “anticipated because of stronger wholesale and retail sales due to favorable weather, and improved margins due to lower-than-anticipated fuel costs.” He said AEP still expects annual earnings to fall between $2.85 and $3.15 per share.

For the second day in a row, the natural gas futures market opened higher but fell lower late in the session as traders elected to take profits on the hunch that all the bullish news available has already been factored into prices. By virtue of losses Friday, Monday, and Tuesday, the November contract becomes the first prompt month since September to notch a string of three down days. It closed at $4.11, down 4.7 cents for the session and a whopping 31 cents beneath Monday’s 18-month high at $4.42.

Canadian 88 Energy Corp. plans to file a preliminary short-form prospectus on Wednesday by way of a secondary offering in Canada after 19% shareholder Duke Energy said it would sell its entire stake in the Calgary-based producer. Duke announced that it has accepted an offer to sell its 25.79 million shares to an underwriting syndicate for C$72.2 million (US$47.2 million) — about C$2.80 each.

Pennsylvania faces the very real threat of being dethroned as the nation’s leading model for electricity choice because skyrocketing wholesale power prices are pushing state customers to abandon electric choice in favor of default providers, according to the Center for the Advancement of Energy Markets. As Pennsylvania stumbles on the road to electric deregulation, Texas, Maine and New York are all making impressive strides in promoting sustainable competition among electricity providers, the center said.

NiSource Inc. is losing no time in preparing for the expectedNov. 1 completion of its Columbia Energy acquisition, announcingThursday that about 5% or 800 of the employees of the two companieshave been notified their positions will be eliminated Dec. 1.

Pressured lower by weaker crude oil futures along with a saggingphysical market, natural gas at the New York Mercantile Exchangewas softer Thursday with buyers on the sidelines, unwilling to addto their already hefty longs. After chopping lower for most of thesession the October contract received a late boost on renewedhurricane fears. However those late gains were more than offset byearly losses and that left the prompt month in negative territory,off 3.1 cents at $5.287 at the close yesterday.

With just over a year to go before the new Alberta-to-Chicagolink, Alliance Pipeline, goes into service TransCanada PipeLinesand affiliate Nova Gas Transmission already are feeling the impactof the competition.

After losing a court battle that would have nullified theacquisition, FPL Energy Inc. announced last week it closed thedeal to obtain Central Maine Power Co.’s (CMP) non-nucleargenerating assets. The transaction is expected to be completed inApril.