Mount

A landowner uprising is buying time for Canadian natural gas suppliers to mount a resistance campaign against a plan to import rival production from the United States.

A landowner uprising is buying time for Canadian natural gas suppliers to mount a resistance campaign against a plan to import rival production from the United States.

The natural gas industry has to mount a “relentless campaign” that demonstrates to the stakeholders that “gas is good, gas is good, gas is good,” American Gas Association Chairman Robert C. Skaggs Jr. said last week.

While December natural gas futures on Wednesday failed to match Tuesday’s nearly 40-cent gain, the contract also failed to mount any kind of retreat, leaving market bulls in control for the time being. December natural gas gained 3 cents on the day to finish at $7.249, while December crude gave back $5.23 of Tuesday’s gains to close at $65.30/bbl.

A proposal to drill for natural gas on Colorado’s Mount Herman in the Pike National Forest has been delayed until spring 2009, the U.S. Forest Service said Thursday.

Former Enron Corp. treasurer Ben Glisan Jr. said Tuesday Enron’s financial problems continued to mount after ex-CEO Jeffrey Skilling resigned in August 2001, and “a number of subsidiaries were struggling, and other parts of the business were taking enormous risk.” Testifying in the trial of Skilling and Enron founder Kenneth Lay, Glisan said both were aware of the true shape of the company, but both lied to analysts in the months preceding its bankruptcy.

Several flat points and a couple of declining ones notwithstanding, prices were able to mount a rally in a large majority of the cash market Thursday. An influx of colder temperatures with occasional snowfalls into northern market areas spurred the general firmness, aided almost imperceptibly by a small futures increase of just under 2 cents the day before.

Canadian Superior said this week that it plans to fight the recently-filed class action lawsuits, which charge that the company and its management issued a number of “materially false and misleading statements” about its El Paso Mariner I-85 well prior to abandonment. The well is located in the Atlantic Ocean off Nova Scotia.

Bullied by follow-through buying on the heels of last week’s supportive storage release, the natural gas futures market opened higher Friday and rose quickly to test key resistance near the $6 mark. However, the gains were short-lived as market-watchers were hit with weather forecasts confirming the belief that the second half of the month would be much warmer than the first half.