Manned

The amount of Gulf of Mexico gas production shut in due to damage from Hurricane Ivan dropped sharply this week to about 743 MMcf/d on Thursday from 1.2 Bcf/d last Friday. However, Southern Natural Gas has reported that pipeline replacement work at Main Pass 298 will leave about 240 MMcf/d shut in for six to 12 months.

Powered by auxiliary generators and manned by just a fraction of the traders and staff that usually support the world’s largest energy market, natural gas trading at the New York Mercantile Exchange experienced a 30-minute delayed opening Friday due to the massive electricity blackout. But despite the paucity of traders, the outage, and the storm in the Gulf of Mexico (see related story), trading proceeded in a surprising orderly manner in the abbreviated session that concluded at 12:30 p.m. EDT. The September contract finished at $4.848, down 4.3 cents for the session.