natural gas

For the week ending March 27, physical natural gas prices dropped from a couple of pennies to a dime at points across the country as spring began to make an appearance and the industry digested the first storage injection of the year. April futures expired Friday at $2.590, down 19.6 cents from the previous week’s finish.

Michael A. Creel, CEO ofEnterprise Products Partners LP’s general partner, plans to retire Dec. 31. COOA.J. “Jim” Teagueis to become CEO at that time. Teague has served as a director of Enterprise’s general partner since 2008 and as COO since 2010. He joined Enterprise in 1999 and is a retiree ofThe Dow Chemical Co.W. Randall Fowlerhas been elected chief administrative officer effective April 1. He has served as a director of Enterprise’s general partner since 2011 and as Enterprise’s executive vice president and CFO since 2007.Bryan F. Bulawahas been elected senior vice president and CFO effective April 1. He has served as Enterprise’s senior vice president and treasurer since 2009.Christian M. “Chris” Nellyhas been elected vice president and treasurer effective April 1. He has served as senior director of finance since 2011.

Columbia Gas Transmission LLC(TCO) is holding a binding open season through April 23 for the Mountaineer XPress Project (MXP), which could carry up to 2.7 Bcf/d of Utica and Marcellus shale gas to the TCO pool and other points. TheColumbia Pipeline Grouppipeline had held a nonbinding open season in September (seeDaily GPI,Sept. 8, 2014). “TCO has executed binding precedent agreements with anchor and non-anchor shippers that collectively provide TCO sufficient support to move forward with the project,” the pipeline said in itsnotice. “The purpose of this open season is to provide all interested parties the opportunity to bid on approximately 500,000 Dth/d of project capacity. The potential MXP in-service date is Nov. 1, 2018, with potential interim service beginning as early as the first half of 2018 for receipts along TCO’s WB Line.”

Natural gas futures scooted lower following the release of government inventory figures showing a storage build somewhat greater than what traders were looking for.

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) in its Annual Energy Outlook (AEO) reports has tended to underestimate natural gas production and consequently overestimate net gas imports, according to the agency’sAnnual Energy Outlook Retrospective Review. In addition, natural gas has been the fuel with the largest absolute percentage difference between AEO projections and historical consumption. “This can be partially traced to the performance of natural gas price projections,” EIA said. “In earlier projections, the natural gas price was influenced by the changes in the world oil price, but this relationship has decoupled since 2000. Through AEO2005 [see Daily GPI,Dec. 10, 2004], the reference case has generally overestimated natural gas consumption, in part due to the tendency for significant underestimates of the natural gas price. In addition, industrial natural gas usage is highly sensitive to business cycles, leading to greater volatility in overall natural gas consumption.” EIA’s AEO2014 concluded that abundant supply and low prices would drive consumption of gas in the industrial and electric power sectors to new levels in 2040 (see Daily GPI,May 8, 2014;Dec. 16, 2013).

Spot gas prices for Friday delivery came in two sizes in Thursday’s trading: large, if you were in the Northeast dealing with lingering cold and an outlook for colder temperatures heading into the weekend, and small, if you were west of the Mississippi.

In separate announcements, Consol Energy Inc. and Rice Energy Inc., two heavyweights in the Appalachian Basin, said they are looking to raise more than $1 billion through private offerings, as both look to weather low commodity prices.

An abundance of interest in Liberty Natural Gas’ long-running proposal for a deepwater liquefied natural gas (LNG) importation port off the coast of New York has drawn so much comment that regulators said they need more time to evaluate the input as well as gather more information.

Spending on upstream investments by nearly two dozen international oil and natural gas companies in the final three months of 2014 was down $77 billion (12%) compared with the same period in 2013, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA).