Push

El Paso Corp. continues to play push-me pull-you as it works out a long-term plan to get debt levels in check without starving its remaining core businesses. CEO Doug Foshee stressed that the company should meet its divestiture target of $3.4 billion by the end of this year, but going forward, “we won’t be able to sell our way to prosperity. We have to grow our core businesses.”

With fresh forecasts and other signs hinting at a potential early start of heating season, gas buyers were spurred to keep pushing their storage injection schedules and to acquire supplies for immediate burns in the northern U.S. and Canada, where chilly start-of-fall temperatures have more furnaces getting turned on as the week progresses. The result Tuesday was further price increases, nearly all of them in double digits. The upticks ranged from a little under a dime to nearly 30 cents; most of those over 20 cents occurred at Rockies/San Juan/Pacific Northwest points.

With one eye on the tropical disturbance in the Caribbean and the other focused on Thursday’s storage report, natural gas futures traders took a wait-and-see approach to the market Wednesday. The result was choppy, sideways-to-lower trading. The September futures contract failed to retest the $5.28 high achieved in the overnight Access trading session Wednesday, paving the way for light long liquidation. It closed at $5.179, down 3.8 cents for the session.

In another push for added liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports into North America, a ChevronTexaco (CVX) affiliate on Monday signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Gorgon Joint Venture in Australia for up to two million tons annually of LNG supplies to West Coast markets. Based on the terms of the MOU, the affiliate will enter confidential negotiations with Gorgon Joint Venture, in which CVX will hold the majority interest and act as the operator.

Funded by a surcharge on investor-owned utility customer bills, the Portland-based Oregon Energy Trust added natural gas and solar programs to ones for which it will provide incentives and energy efficiency programs to customers of the state’s major private sector utilities — Pacific Power, Portland General Electric and Northwest Natural Gas. The expanded programs for the 18-month-old nonprofit organization started earlier in July.

In a textbook display of just how large an impact the weekly Energy Information Administration (EIA) gas inventory report can have on the market, natural gas prices plummeted Thursday moments after the EIA said that a hefty 111 Bcf was added to underground storage facilities last week. After a quick dip lower at 10:30 a.m. EDT, sellers took a moment to catch their breath, but bulls could not muster much of a rally. Bears made use of their second wind to punish prices lower again Thursday afternoon. The August contract finished at $5.258, down 26.2 cents for the session.

A legislative proposal recently floated by Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) to push back implementation of FERC’s standard market design (SMD) plan for U.S. wholesale power markets to 2008 “does not have sufficient votes” in the U.S. Senate and “it does not have my support,” Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) told reporters last week.

Rising temperatures, particularly in the Midwest and Midcontinent regions, gave an extra push Tuesday to the somewhat hesitant rally of the day before. The result was double-digit gains at almost every point Tuesday, with a majority of them surpassing 20 cents and a couple approaching 40 cents.

For the second time this year, Anadarko Petroleum Corp. has lowered its 2003 targets for crude oil and natural gas sales because of production problems in three of its key drilling areas, the Gulf of Mexico (GOM), Algeria and Qatar. Oil and gas sales volumes in 2003 now are expected to be 190 MMboe, including 46 MMboe for the second quarter, down from a previous forecast of 200 MMboe for the year and 48 MMboe for the quarter.