natural gas

Natural gas for delivery Tuesday rose sharply in Monday’s trading as stout power-driven gains in the Northeast and East easily overwhelmed weakness in the Great Lakes and Midwest. Gulf locations were steady to a penny or 2 cents higher, and Rockies and California points gained anywhere from a nickel to well over a dime.

With significant new pipeline capacity not likely before some time in 2016, burgeoning Bakken crude oil production in North Dakota will continue to rely on rail to access the three coasts: East, West and Gulf, according to a report by Fitch Ratings.

Affiliates of U.S. midstream giants Targa Resources Corp. and Atlas Energy LP on Monday agreed to combine their natural gas and oil operations in a transaction worth $7.7 billion that would merge systems serving the Permian and Williston basins, Midcontinent, East/South Texas, the Gulf Coast and the Gulf of Mexico.

The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) said Monday it has suspended trading shares of Endeavour International Corp. and would begin delisting the stock, three days after the Houston-based company and some of its subsidiaries filed for bankruptcy protection and executed an agreement to restructure its debt obligations.

The United States has been burning more natural gas this year and relying less on imported energy overall, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), which credited the Bakken, Marcellus and Eagle Ford shales as well as the Permian Basin for increased liquids production.

With winter 2014-2015 right around the corner, many in the natural gas market seem relatively comfortable with their fourth quarter price expectations now that worries about insufficient winter supply have been mostly assuaged by an exceedingly strong storage injection season. Looking to get a handle on how 2015 might play out, there is no shortage of factors at play.

NextDecade LLC and York Capital Management Global Advisors LLC struck a deal for development of mid-scale liquefied natural gas (LNG) export projects in Brownsville and Galveston, TX. “York has extensive experience investing across the LNG value chain and provides strong backing to support financing for the advancement of NextDecade’s LNG export projects,” said NextDecade CEO Kathleen Eisbrenner. The Woodlands, TX-based NextDecade and York plan to conduct additional front-end engineering and design analysis in order to pre-file applications with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to permit, site, construct and operate terminals in Brownsville and Galveston within the first quarter of 2015. Last month, NextDecade secured an option on land for the terminal it is considering to site in Galveston (see Daily GPI,Sept. 15). Plans for the Brownsville terminal were announced at the end of 2012 (see Daily GPI,Dec. 20, 2012;Dec. 3, 2012).

The first deepwater subsea project to be developed by Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) has been awarded to OneSubsea, a Cameron and Schlumberger Ltd. company, for the natural gas-rich Lakach field offshore Mexico.

Consumers Energy, Michigan’s largest utility, said its extensive underground storage system helped save its natural gas customers about $295 million during last winter’s polar vortex.