Radar

With shale gas the United States has an abundant natural resource that wasn’t on the industrial or economic development radar screen a mere five years ago. In other words, “a competitive edge is coming back to America,” Dow Chemical Co.’s Brian Ames told a Houston audience last week.

With shale gas the United States has an abundant natural resource that wasn’t on the industrial or economic development radar screen a mere five years ago. In other words, “a competitive edge is coming back to America,” Dow Chemical Co.’s Brian Ames told a Houston audience Monday.

While TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL oil pipeline has become controversial in general interest news media and politics, Enbridge Inc.’s. under-the-radar oil pipeline cutting through the nation’s midsection from Illinois to Houston-Port Arthur, TX, has the opposite image. The contrast drew general news media interest over the weekend.

Rediscovered as an oil/gas industry practice that hasn’t been high on California’s radar, hydraulic fracturing (fracking) is taking on a higher profile among state and local elected officials as the state’s legislature considers a new law (AB 591) that would require operators to disclose chemicals they use in the fracking process.

October natural gas futures values plummeted on Monday after the three hurricanes on the radar Friday all chose a more northerly path over the weekend, sparing the Gulf Coast and U.S. energy interests yet again. Another theory is that the back and forth trading of the last week reflects the normal ebb and flow of a range-bound market. The prompt-month contract Monday reached a low of $3.806 before closing out the regular session at $3.822, down 20.2 cents from Friday’s finish.

There were no blizzards or major heat waves in the near-term sights of the weather radar, but spot prices managed to rebound by large amounts across the board Tuesday from the depths to which they had sunk on Friday. They did have support from both Friday’s 22-cent futures gain (which broke a string of downward sessions) and the return of industrial load from the extra losses it incurs on a holiday weekend.

Although no major heat waves were on the weather radar outside the continuing one from the south-central U.S. through the Southwest, modest warming trends in the Midwest and parts of the Northeast and South, along with the previous day’s August futures increase of 8.8 cents, were enough to generate price increases across the board Thursday.

Under the radar of the usual public discussion on business agenda items, Sempra Energy quietly celebrated Friday as the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) separately and unanimously approved a $6.5 million reward for its gas utility supply purchasing programs and an amendment to a delayed pumped storage generation project that could bring its electric utility operations some extra revenues.

The natural gas potential in British Columbia has been on the radar screens of producers for years, but BP plc appears ready to sink C$1 billion in the region to unlock coalbed methane (CBM) reserves using a process it developed at its successful Wamsutter project in Wyoming.