Predicted

As a marketer had predicted a day earlier, a majority of the cash market was able to continue ascending Tuesday — but by considerably smaller amounts (except in the rebounding Rockies) than on Monday. In addition, there were more flat to softer points as cooling trends began to reduce power generation demand in key northern market areas.

Challenged by lower energy prices and production, Wall Street wizards had predicted that the oil and natural gas producers would unveil less-than-stellar results in the first three months of 2007. However, ExxonMobil Corp. led by example, stunning the financial prognosticators with yet another record quarter.

As a couple of sources had predicted the day before, the cash market remained close to unchanged Thursday in most cases. Freezing lows forecast for Friday morning in much of the East, even into the Deep South, were augmented by Wednesday’s screen rebound in being responsible for modest gains at a majority of points.

The federal coordinator for the Alaska natural gas pipeline project predicted Monday that Gov. Sarah Palin will have a gasline bill on her desk by the end of the state legislative session and likely will issue a request for proposal in July.

CIG noted Friday that unseasonably cold weather had moved into its Front Range market region and was predicted to continue into this week. “With the high market demands anticipated for this period combined with high firm transportation load factors, CIG is concerned that our ability to absorb imbalances related to underdeliveries at receipt points or overdeliveries at delivery points will be limited to a significant degree,” it said. “Therefore, CIG expects operators to manage their confirmations to match flow rates to scheduled quantities, factoring in freeze-offs and other conditions as necessary, particularly while the cold weather impacts CIG’s field and pipeline operations.” At locations that are not flowing at scheduled rates, the pipeline plans to place underperformance caps during the scheduling process to reduce nominations to match such flow rates. No Notice shippers should anticipate that CIG will be able to support a maximum of 100,000 Dth/d of authorized delivery overruns, it said.

The predicted shakeout of Gulf Coast/Gulf of Mexico liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects is well under way, with ConocoPhillips adding its Beacon Port Clean Energy terminal offshore Louisiana to a growing list of projects that have been mothballed or canceled in recent weeks. Beacon Port’s demise follows ConocoPhillips’ other offshore LNG project, Compass Port, ExxonMobil’s Pearl Crossing, BP’s Bay Crossing/Pelican Island project onshore Texas and several others.

The predicted shakeout of Gulf Coast/Gulf of Mexico liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects is well under way, with ConocoPhillips adding its Beacon Port Clean Energy terminal offshore Louisiana to a growing list of projects that have been mothballed or canceled in recent weeks (see Daily GPI, March 23). Beacon Port’s demise follows ConocoPhillips’ other offshore LNG project, Compass Port, ExxonMobil’s Pearl Crossing, BP’s Bay Crossing/Pelican Island project onshore Texas and several others.

Although the messages may be economically mixed, Sempra Energy’s Southern California Ga Co. utility unit Wednesday predicted lower natural gas bills this winter, but it nevertheless urged its business customers to continue to seek various energy savings through a number of recommended programs. Mirroring a message by its utility counterpart in the northern half of the state, SoCalGas said businesses throughout California should see lower gas bills the upcoming winter.

In outlining Duke Energy’s transition from an “energy superstore” into “two pure-play powerhouses,” CEO James Rogers predicted that the new Duke Energy pure-play electric company would grow ongoing diluted earnings per share by an average of 4-6% over at least the next three years through solid organic growth and a 1-1.5%/year increase in electricity demand.