Rampaging

Four days after the rampaging Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Louisiana Coast the natural gas industry was beginning to get some idea of the extent of the damage to onshore facilities — some of which were still under water — and offshore rigs, platforms and pipelines, some damaged and some missing in action. But, Gulf-based companies had located most of their employees, Chevron was setting up a tent city for homeless workers, and production was starting to edge up.

Four days after the rampaging Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Louisiana Coast the natural gas industry was just beginning to get some idea of the extent of the damage to onshore facilities, some of which were still under water, and offshore rigs, platforms and pipelines, some damaged and some missing in action. The only sure thing was that Katrina would go down in the record books as “catastrophic,” and just about the most devastating storm in 100 years or more. The word heard over and over was “unbelievable,” which was an understatement.

Cash prices continued to act like rampaging bulls as Octoberbegan Thursday. Double-digit increases of between 10 and 20 centswere the order of the day almost across the board as traders notedchilly weather in major northern market areas and the fact thatGulf of Mexico production, while nearly back to normal afterhurricane outages, still was missing a few hundred MMcf/d. At leasttwo big processing plants in southeast Louisiana remained shut downdue to storm damage. Cash also built on Wednesday’s big screenrun-up and initially higher futures prices Thursday. Even theNovember contract eventually wound up with a small loss, a traderpointed out.