Marked

Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-WV) has accused President Bush of failing to deliver on any of the promised benefits in his national energy plan, which marked its three-year anniversary last week.

Fort Worth-based independent XTO Energy Inc. marked the largest acquisition in its history on Monday with the purchase of 150 onshore producing assets for $1.1 billion from ChevronTexaco Corp. The company will add about 88 MMcf/d of natural gas and 14,000 bbl of oil from properties in seven states — more than 90% in Texas and New Mexico.

The mild firming that had marked most trading in the first two days of this week switched to mild softening Wednesday. Temperature fundamentals remain benign in most regions. The screen slipped for the third day in a row, although Wednesday’s dip, like Tuesday’s, was small at only a couple of pennies or so. And traders are expecting another large storage injection report Thursday morning to whack another chunk out of the year-on-year deficit.

In another session marked by choppy trading activity, natural gas futures shuffled sideways Friday as bullish technicians and bearish analysts clashed in the court of industry opinion. And while each trading faction had its moments, little was resolved by Friday’s $6.51 close, which was down just 1.1 cents for the session and near the middle of the market’s wide $6.350-625 daily trading range.

As part of an omnibus energy bill to be marked up next month, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee plans to propose a pilot program that will offer producers in four or five western states “one-stop shopping” to obtain their permits and other authorizations to drill for oil and natural gas on federal lands, said a press aide.

A year already marked by accounting problems and revelations of round-trip transactions preceded restatements of 2001 income last week by Reliant Energy Inc. and subsidiary Reliant Resources Inc. However, management warned that it is still reviewing other data on the phony deals, and ultimately plan to restate revenue, fuel and cost of natural gas and purchased power expenses for 1999, 2000 and 2001.

Enron Corp. is in shreds, literally and figuratively, with a week marked by dramatic accusations, the founder quietly resigning, and a former vice chairman tragically dying from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. As Congress began its intense investigations of the company and its auditor, Arthur Andersen, there only was one tiny bit of good news for the company and its supporters. The U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York approved a deal for UBS Warburg to pick up its quickly fading wholesale energy trading unit.

Last week marked the second consecutive week of warmer than normal temperatures and the tenth overall this heating season, forcing UBS Warburg analyst Ronald Barone to concede his forecast for a $2.10/MMBtu average spot wellhead price this quarter could be a little too high. He also said his forecasts for the year may have to come down and other analysts agreed the fundamental picture continues to look weak despite the drilling decline.

After a bumpy ride early last week marked by double-digit price swings, natural gas futures coasted smoothly into the weekend Thursday and Friday as traders elected to wait until a clearer fundamental and technical picture is available. By failing to break out of Thursday’s 15-cent trading range, the December contract notched a second-straight “inside day” on the daily chart. It finished at $3.248, down 4.2 cents for the session Friday, but up 6.5 cents for the week.