Morning

Columbia Gas said final testing was occurring Tuesday morning at its Milford location, where a long-running outage has been in place, and it anticipated that intraday nominations might be possible.

In e-mail notices that arrived a minute apart Thursday morning, Southern California Gas declared a high-linepack OFO for the same day and then extended it through at least Friday. The tolerance for positive daily imbalances was set at 10% in both cases. The distributor also said it will lose 30 MMcf/d of storage injection capacity from next Tuesday through June 10 due to anomaly repairs on Line 1004.

Southern California Gas sent a notice Wednesday morning declaring a high-linepack OFO effective with that day’s Intraday 1 nominations cycle. The tolerance for positive daily imbalances was set at 10%. The OFO was not extended beyond Wednesday.

Those who viewed the lackluster morning trade and forecasted a quiet lead into the weekend for natural gas futures were sorely mistaken as a fierce round of short-covering was sparked just before 2 p.m. EDT. April natural gas futures reached a high of $4.425 before closing out the regular session at $4.403, up 15.9 cents from Thursday’s close.

CenterPoint Energy officials are investigating what caused one of the company’s gas lines to explode last Thursday morning around 8 a.m. in Minneapolis, MN. While the explosion and resulting fireball could be seen for miles, no injuries were reported and repair work was under way.

CenterPoint Energy officials are investigating what caused one of the company’s gas lines to explode Thursday morning around 8 a.m. in Minneapolis, MN. While the explosion and resulting fireball could be seen for miles, no injuries were reported as of Thursday afternoon and repair work was under way.

A day after the Super Bowl, the natural gas industry, its customers, regulators and state lawmakers were Monday morning quarterbacking what caused the recent gas supply shortfalls in Texas and neighboring states — and consequent shortages of power generating capacity — as exceptionally cold weather gripped the region.

Near-month natural gas futures went in search of lower price levels Thursday morning following news from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) that 138 Bcf was withdrawn from natural gas storage for the week ending Jan. 7. The storage report, which was “bearish” compared to most industry expectations, combined with freshly updated weather forecasts for slightly less chilly temps later this month, pushed February futures on Thursday to a low of $4.382 and a close at $4.407, down 12.4 cents from Wednesday’s finish.

Natural gas futures values knee-jerked higher Thursday morning following the news from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) that 135 Bcf was withdrawn from underground storage for the week ending Dec. 31. However, the sentiment was short-lived as February futures declined in the afternoon to finish the regular session at $4.434, down 3.9 cents from Wednesday’s close.