nymex settlement

FERC last Tuesday approved a stipulation and consent agreement ordering JP Morgan Ventures Energy Corp. (JPMVEC) to pay $410 million in penalties and disgorge profits for allegedly manipulating power markets in California and the Midwest.

In a litmus test on the costs to utility consumers for natural gas lost through leaky distribution pipeline systems and other sources, Massachusetts consumers paid as much as $1.5 billion more in the last decade just for the leaks, a congressional study has found.

Centrica plc North American subsidiary Direct Energy Business has agreed to acquire Hess’s New Jersey-based energy marketing business for $731 million in cash and approximately $300 million in net working capital, the UK utility said Tuesday.

FERC has called for a technical conference to address an intermittent reversal of natural gas flow on Texas Eastern Transmission’s (Tetco) system in Ohio caused by the increasing influx of rich Appalachian gas.

Chesapeake Energy Corp.’s shareholders were cheering last week after the company delivered a solid quarterly earnings report and outlines of a new strategy to live within cash flow, ending its longstanding mode of capturing leasehold to focus on developing only the best plays in the portfolio.

A FERC administrative law judge’s (ALJ) initial decision ordering refunds of pipeline charges wrongfully collected by Rockies Express LLC (REX) pipeline for lost and unaccounted for gas, if endorsed by the full Commission, could disrupt the entire pipeline industry, according to the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America (INGAA).

Natural gas production from the Marcellus and Utica shales should double over the next five years, surpassing Rockies output levels from 2012 and accounting for “over a quarter of U.S. Lower 48 gas production,” Wood Mackenzie upstream analysts are forecasting.

Given the projected demand in the heavy-duty, long-haul trucking sector, U.S. capacity for producing liquefied natural gas (LNG) for transportation will need to accelerate rapidly to build up to 90 new small-scale LNG production facilities with a collective capital investment of up to $3.6 billion, a Pace Global consultant said last week.

Demand between now and 2015 will prop up natural gas prices, even with a backlog of drilled wells awaiting connection, and from 2016 to 2018 a “dramatic structural increase” in demand could outpace supply additions and send gas prices to as high as $6.00/MMBtu, BNP Paribas’ Teri Viswanath, director of commodity strategy, said last Friday.