natural gas prices

Consol Energy Inc. and Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County Airport Authority (ACAA) last week unveiled a proposal for Pittsburgh International Airport property to drill 47 wells into airport property overlying the Marcellus Shale, with the potential to explore Upper Devonian targets.

NGI’s National Spot Gas Average for September bidweek advanced a seemingly nominal 4 cents to $3.49 from the previous month, but even though the Midwest got the lion’s share of market focus during August as it endured a brutal heat wave, California for the most part scored the nation’s highest bidweek price, with the PG&E Citygate coming in at $3.88, up 12 cents.

NGI’s National Spot Gas Average for September bidweek advanced a seemingly nominal 4 cents to $3.49 from the previous month, but even though the Midwest got the lion’s share of market focus during August as it endured a brutal heat wave, California for the most part scored the nation’s highest bidweek price, with the PG&E Citygate coming in at $3.88, up 12 cents.

Although President Obama and the participants in a town hall meeting Friday at Binghamton University in New York devoted most of their discourse to education, energy was mentioned once, with the president acknowledging the rise of natural gas but calling for further investment in alternative energies not derived from fossil fuels.

In the midst of mostly stable U.S. natural gas prices and a steady boom in domestic supplies, natural gas utility hedging programs have come under increasing scrutiny, with regulators and consumer advocates questioning the overall costs of hedging in recent years.

Judging from the tenor and content of the comments that have been filed on the revised hydraulic fracturing (fracking) rule, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) may have to go back to the drawing board on the draft rule for a third time.

A number of Congressional lawmakers have expressed interest in resolving the issue of which federal agency — the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission or the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) — has jurisdiction in cases involving the manipulation of the futures and physical gas markets, said a Commission spokeswoman.

Nearly all of the workers hired by the natural gas industry for jobs in the Marcellus and Utica shales in 2012 were residents of states in the region, according to a workforce survey conducted by the Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC).

The Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation of JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s energy trading reportedly is looking into whether criminal laws were potentially violated, but neither federal officials nor the company would comment on the reports.