Rare

Just days after a town in western New York adopted a one-year moratorium on oil and natural gas activities, the town’s only operator made a rare move and decided to shut down its wells and pipelines there, halting royalty payments and free natural gas to landowners.

Other than parts of the South, desert Southwest and California, it was rare to find any forecasts for Thursday lows that didn’t range from around freezing to a few degrees below zero. But that was able to keep only a little more than half of the cash market from seeing losses Wednesday. One source suggested that increasing use of storage in lieu of spot gas purchases may have been limiting the price-boosting impact of the cold weather.

As it works to craft best practices for hydraulic fracturing (hydrofracking), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) was hosting a rare meeting in Washington Monday night — Washington, PA, not Washington, DC.

The U.S. House, in a rare show of bipartisanship Thursday, passed the Restarting American Offshore Leasing Now Act (HR 1230), but there appears to be no rush in the Senate to develop a companion bill, where passage in any case may be in doubt.

In a rare show of bipartisanship, the U.S. House passed the “Restarting American Offshore Leasing Now Act,” also known as HR 1230, by a 266-149 vote on Thursday before breaking for the week. The bill now moves to the Senate.

The bullish effect of a smidgen of extra cooling load and a rare boost from prior-day futures proved to have short effect in raising cash prices. After gains at virtually all points on Monday, flat to slightly higher numbers remained in a moderate majority Tuesday but were being infiltrated by several small losses.

Citing a rare state unit’s budget surplus, the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission (PRC) last Thursday slashed by 80% the fees charged by its pipeline safety bureau. The PRC unit conducts pipeline and facility safety inspections and helps enforce state and federal regulations for oil and natural gas pipelines.

With springtime weather abounding in most areas and forecasts of sub-freezing lows rare outside Canada and sections of the Upper Plains near the Canadian border, prices continued to drop in most of the market Monday. Last Friday’s decline of 10.9 cents by April futures further depressed cash prices, and the return of industrial demand from its usual weekend hiatus had virtually no supportive effect.

With springtime weather abounding in most areas and forecasts of sub-freezing lows rare outside Canada and sections of the Upper Plains near the Canadian border, prices continued to drop in most of the market Monday. Last Friday’s decline of 10.9 cents by April futures further depressed cash prices, and the return of industrial demand from its usual weekend hiatus had virtually no supportive effect.