Point

Despite last Thursday’s announced delay in U.S. State Department processing and earlier criticisms of inflated economic benefits from the project (see Shale Daily, Nov. 9), the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Alberta, Canada to the U.S. Gulf of Mexico ultimately should be approved, according to project sponsor TransCanada.

CIG canceled Wednesday a Strained Operating Condition (SOC) that had been declared Sept. 23 due to high storage inventory levels at that point in the injection season. See the bulletin board for service changes that went into effect upon the ending of the SOC.

The cash market is displaying one of its quirkier characteristics. After rising strongly at all but one point Monday in anticipation of significantly colder temperatures approaching later in the week to much of the nation’s midsection, prices fell at a large majority of locations Tuesday, even as the heating load-boosting conditions began to arrive.

ANR said it has shut in the Contango Eugene Island 63/11 receipt point for pipeline repairs and is not accepting nominations there until further notice.

Rex Energy Corp. said results from its first test well into the Upper Devonian/Burkett Shale just north of Pittsburgh are encouraging enough to justify additional wells into the formation directly above the Marcellus Shale in the coming year.

After climbing a couple of cents each day for the first four days of the week, cash point averages across the board gave all of the premium back and then some as a vast majority of prices dropped by more than 20 cents on Friday.

Shale gas production is projected to increase to the point where it becomes the dominant domestic gas supply over the next two decades, but it brings with it the “greatest source of uncertainty” facing North American gas markets, according to the Deloitte Center for Energy Solutions.

Dry natural gas production from the Barnett Shale during the first half of this year increased 6% compared with the year-ago period. Total liquids production was up 7%, mainly on a 12% gain in oil production (see chart). But the Barnett rig count has declined 25% from a year ago. Clearly, producers there are doing more with less, and it’s because they have “learned by doing.”

At the halfway point through the injection season, working natural gas inventories for the Lower 48 states as of July 15 were about 7.4% below the level for the same period last year due to more nuclear outages and increased air conditioning use resulting from warmer-than-normal weather, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said. In a separate report, the EIA said that coal is losing its generation market share to natural gas.