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Physical gas for weekend and Monday delivery skidded a hefty 11 cents on average in Friday trading. Demand-driven gains at New England points and firm eastern quotes were unable to counter pervasive selling, which saw many locations endure double-digit losses. At the close of futures trading December had retreated 6.8 cents to $3.513 and January was down 7.2 cents to $3.591. December crude oil tumbled $1.77 to $94.61/bbl.

“The times they are a changin’.” NGI’s National Spot Gas Average for November Bidweek prices showed a tempered gain of 9 cents to $3.53, but regional changes were moving around with the randomness of bumper cars at an amusement park.

For the three trading days ended Oct. 30 physical gas prices fell an average of 12 cents to $3.62, according to NGI’s National Spot Gas Average.

Lone Star NGL LLC has started up the second natural gas liquids (NGL) fractionator at its Mont Belvieu, TX, facility. Lone Star Frac II is a 100,000 b/d fractionator that brings Lone Star’s total fractionation capacity at Mont Belvieu to 200,000 b/d. Lone Star is a joint venture of Energy Transfer Partners LP (ETP) and Regency Energy Partners LP. The fractionators receive NGLs from several sources, including Lone Star’s west Texas NGL pipelines and ETP’s Justice NGL pipeline. Volumes transported on Lone Star’s pipeline system and the ETP Justice pipeline continue to ramp up as shippers under long-term agreements with Lone Star and ETP increase their production from the Permian Basin, Eagle Ford Shale, and other producing regions, the companies said.

The U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) has proposed a policy that would enable it to give conditional approval for barges to transport wastewater from hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in bulk, a move that could potentially open the nation’s waterways as transit options.

Like the lumbering giants they resemble, oil majors take a bit more time to pivot from one target to the next, a task exceedingly difficult for North America’s top natural gas producer, ExxonMobil Corp. The pirouette to more oily targets came full circle in the third quarter in the three most strategic U.S. leaseholds, the Permian Basin and the Woodford and Bakken shales.

Northeastern natural gas markets have gotten a “strong signal” from the gas-on-gas competition in the Appalachian Basin this year, and there is now support for continued infrastructure development to take away more supplies, Williams CEO Alan Armstrong said Thursday.

ExxonMobil Corp.’s third quarter earnings fell 18% from a year ago, but for the first time since 2011, production was higher.

Royal Dutch Shell plc wants to tiptoe back into Alaska’s frigid waters as soon as next summer after taking a pause following a series of blunders and miscalculations.