Morning

May natural gas is expected to open 3 cents higher Wednesday morning at $4.77 as near-term weather forecasts are seen making timely additions to storage problematical. Overnight oil markets were mixed.

April natural gas is expected to open 3 cents lower Wednesday morning at $4.58 as traders consolidate positions ahead of Thursday’s inventory report and the weather outlook is little changed. Overnight oil markets tumbled.

As cold — albeit waning — continued to grip much of the United States Tuesday, power plants in PJM Interconnection and ISO New England wereimpacted by natural gas delivery issues and/or high prices for the fuel. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) said pipelines into New England were constrained by the Polar Vortex. Meanwhile, throughput at a central Alabama gas utility was running at 10-year record levels.

Five people were injured after a Marcellus Shale gas well owned by Antero Resources exploded in Doddridge County, WV, on Sunday morning.

An explosion early Tuesday morning on the Florida Gas Transmission (FGT) pipeline in Washington Parish, LA, 80 miles north of New Orleans destroyed a mobile home and caused the evacuation of 55 area residents. Gas supplies moving on the west-to-east pipeline were rerouted, operator Energy Transfer Partners said. No injuries were reported

Two people have now died as a result of Thursday morning’s explosion at the Williams Geismar, LA, olefins plant in Ascension Parish.

Two workers were killed and three others hospitalized Friday morning in an oil well blowout in the Bone Spring tight sands formation in West Texas, near Barstow.

A train derailment near the town of Parkers Prairie, MN, Wednesday morning spilled 20,000-30,000 gallons of crude oil into a field, but frozen, snow-covered ground was “a saving grace” that should keep environmental damage to a minimum, a Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) spokesman told NGI’s Shale Daily. Fourteen of the Canadian Pacific Railroad train’s 94 cars derailed and oil from three of them was leaked, the spokesman said. “They’re going to be able to recover most, if not all” of the oil, according to MPCA spokesman Dan Olson. No injuries were reported.

Cash natural gas prices held steady on average Thursday with most traders electing to get deals done ahead of the morning inventory report from the Energy Information Administration (EIA).