Movements

Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) services that have been under pressure in North America’s natural gas basins now are seeing some of the same impacts in the liquids-rich basins, Schlumberger Ltd.’s CEO said Friday.

First Energy Capital analyst Martin King — who is considered to be one of the best when it comes to anticipating movements in the North American natural gas market — has shifted to a much more bearish price stance for North American gas prices in the short, medium and long term compared to his previous price forecasts.

First Energy Capital analyst Martin King — who is considered to be one of the best when it comes to anticipating movements in the North American natural gas market — has shifted to a much more bearish price stance for North American gas prices in the short, medium and long term compared to his previous price forecast.

Analysts see the natural gas market temporarily stymied by the holiday season and end-of-the-year book squaring. Once trading rosters are up to pre-holiday levels, price movements will have more significance, they say. Holidays or not, January futures shed 11.3 cents to $5.669 Monday and February dropped 11.7 cents to $5.712. The expiring January crude oil contract fell 89 cents to $72.47/bbl.

The cash market saw one of its most synchronized price movements ever Thursday as nearly all points ranged from flat to less than a nickel higher. A couple of scattered points fell up to 4 cents, and a couple of others rose slightly more than a nickel.

Just looking at Wednesday’s price movements in a geographic vacuum, one might assume it was the West that had a monopoly on cold weather and that conditions were fairly balmy back east. That would be an inaccurate assumption, but it was Rockies/San Juan points recording substantial gains of up to about 80 cents (Cheyenne Hub) while eastern markets were mixed but mostly lower, led by plunges of about half a dollar at some Northeast citygates.

Until yesterday the February aftermarket was rather dull and stodgy, with small price movements up or down (mostly up) characterizing each trading day. But the pattern got broken Tuesday with upticks consistently in the range of 15-20 cents reported for both eastern and western points. Larger gains of 30-50 cents were recorded in the Northeast, with a few citygate points seeing WACOGs above $3. (Intra-Alberta and Westcoast Station 2 were also above $3 in Canadian dollars.)

Multi-dollar price movements during various trading days about a year ago may have been more heady, but many traders are likely to think of last week’s bidweek and swing markets as among their most hectic ever. The near-chaos situation resulted from the unprecedented virtual collapse of Enron, previously the dominant market-maker, as a viable trading entity.

There was almost no consistency in price movements Wednesday,although a slight majority of the changes were downward. Rises andfalls mixed with each other in the Gulf Coast andMidcontinent/Midwest.