Natural

Reviewing its nearly five years of weekly natural gas storagesurveys, the American Gas Assoc. (AGA) said its numbers generallyhave tracked the more rigorously compiled monthly surveys by theEnergy Information Administration (EIA) and the AGA survey hasbecome an industry standard.

Natural gas is second only to the newly established electricitymarket in terms of volatility, and Tuesday it did little to dispelthat notion as the market dipped momentarily, only to spikedramatically higher in the last 90 minutes of trading, leaving eventhe most weathered of bulls surprised by the advance. Octobersettled at $2.132, a 17.8-cent gain for the day and nearly ahalf-dollar above the $1.63 low established less than two weeksago. Estimated volume confirmed the active trading with over120,000 contracts changing hands.

The two major electronic natural gas trading systems havestarted a price war, slashing transaction fees to zero at multiplelocations for the month of September. In late August, Altra EnergyTechnologies announced a “Streamline Inventory Reduction Sale,”reducing prices to 0.001 cent/MMBtu at all its major Louisiana andTexas locations and dropping fees to zero at all of its othertrading points. Soon after, QuickTrade countered by dropping feesto 0.001 cent/MMBtu for day trades at major Louisiana an Texaspoints and Chicago, and cutting costs to zero for day trades at theColumbia Gas pool and the Henry Hub.

The Natural Gas Supply Association said it expects an additional200 Bcf/year of incremental gas demand growth by 2005 from theEnvironmental Protection Agency’s new more competitive standardsfor NOx emissions from new power generation boilers. EPAAdministrator Carol Browner signed the final rule, Utility BoilerNox New Source Performance Standards (NSPS), last week.

El Paso Natural Gas has asked FERC to overturn a July ALJinitial decision that found it failed to “seriously confront thepotential impact of…turned-back capacity on the remainingcustomers on its system and take adequate steps to remarket thecapacity” when it first learned that Southern California Gas (SoCalGas) planned to step down its capacity commitment effective January1996. If upheld by the Commission, El Paso would be required toshoulder the costs for half of the 300 MMcf/d of capacity that theLDC turned back.

For the second day in a row Tuesday, natural gas futuresreceived a strong boost in prices from short-covering activity dueto tropical storm concerns in the Gulf of Mexico. Earl became thefifth named storm in the 1998 Atlantic hurricane season yesterdaywith sustained winds of 60 miles per hour. As of 5:00 P.M. EST Tuesday, Earl was located 240 miles South Southwest of New Orleansand moving toward the Northeast at 12 mph. The October contractopened strong and wasted little time in trending higher before anafternoon sell-off left the market with a modest 3.4 cent gainbefore the closing bell. Estimated volume was a robust 82,172.

The 330-mile U.S. portion of the Vector Pipeline, proposed tocarry natural gas from the Chicago Hub to eastern connections,moved a step closer to construction with the issuance yesterday ofa draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) by the Federal EnergyRegulatory Commission.

A delay on upstream unbundling continued this week in Oklahomawhere regulators and Oklahoma Natural Gas are in a heated battleover some of the changes ordered by the commission in July. Theutility refuses to begin a competitive bidding process ontransmission and supply service to the state’s major cities. Itfiled an appeal of the unbundling order with the Oklahoma SupremeCourt last week, saying it raised a number of constitutionalissues. The two sides may reach a settlement, but a dispute overabout $11 million stands in the way.

Tejas Natural Gas Liquids, LLC, and Marathon Oil Co. areplanning to build a new gas processing plant near Centerville, LA.The $30 million Neptune Gas Processing Plant initially will handle300 MMcf/d of production delivered from deep-water wells in theGulf of Mexico.