natural gas

Traders and marketers can breathe something of a sigh of relief that the mind-bending volatility of the winter is past, but market bulls were treated to the first storage report of the newly-minted injection season.

American Energy Partners LP (AEP-LP) has hired Curt Launer as its senior vice president of capital formation. Launer, 58, will focus on AEP-LP’s investor relations. He formerly worked as an energy analyst covering natural gas and master limited partnerships at Deutsche Bank.

BP plc, which plans to sell up to $10 billion more in noncore assets over the next two years, is marketing the rights to about 280,000 gross acres of natural gas-rich properties in the Texas Panhandle’s Sherman and Moore counties, which produce about 4,000 boe/d. The field is mature and better suited to operators specializing in late-life basin operations, a spokesman said. The decision is consistent with BP’s strategy to manage its portfolio with a focus on “value over volume,” he added. BP has around 500 wells now producing on the leases and still plans to continue to operate close to 1,700 wells in the Panhandle after the sale. The properties are expected to fetch up to $500 million.

A trio of conservation groups is suing to force full protection of the lesser prairie-chicken under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) while a trio of states and their allies are suing over the process that led to recently adopted measures to protect the bird.

The Mississippian Lime (ML) formation hasn’t proven itself to be a go-to drilling spot yet, but pilot wells show promise where the rocks, clay and sand intersect in Kansas and Oklahoma.

Natural gas for physical delivery over the weekend and Monday worked lower in trading Friday as weather-driven declines in the East and Northeast were able to offset broader market strength in the Midcontinent, Rockies and Great Lakes.

Physical gas for Friday delivery all along the Eastern Seaboard fell by double digits in Thursday’s trading, but the resounding declines were offset by more modest losses elsewhere as well as gains in Rockies, San Juan and Permian basin delivery points.

Legislation (SB 138) to advance a large-diameter natural gas pipeline to commercialize Alaska’s North Slope gas resources via liquefied natural gas (LNG) export passed out of the Alaska House Resources Committee Wednesday and is to be taken up by the House Finance Committee. Senate Bill 138 provides the framework for Alaska to become an owner in the Alaska LNG Project and move the project into the pre-front end engineering and design stage — designing the project and refining associated cost and engineering elements. The state Senate passed the bill last month (see Daily GPI, March 19).

They’ve agreed to work out jurisdictional gray areas in connection with market surveillance and investigations, but there are still differences in FERC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) approaches to enforcement, according to officials from the two agencies and an attorney who has represented defendants in enforcement proceedings.