Reprieve

The coming summer will be warmer than normal across most of the United States, but still “a reprieve from the big heat of the last three summers,” according to forecasters at Weather Services International (WSI).

The freefall in natural gas futures prices of the last few weeks received a small reprieve on Friday after the February contract managed to eke out a 2.1-cent gain to close the week at $2.343. However, market bulls might as well cool their heels as Friday’s close marked a 32.7-cent decline from the previous week’s close.

With the official start to the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season beginning, the energy industry on Thursday received no last-minute reprieve from the recent forecasts calling for an active season.

With the official start to the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season beginning, the energy industry on Thursday received no last-minute reprieve from the recent forecasts calling for an active season.

There’s no reprieve in sight from gas demand growth from Canadian oil sands operations. An industrial natural gas consumer forecast shows the oil sands continuing to eat into Canadian gas exports to the United States.

With its board dismissing its CEO/founder and Wall Street expecting a bankruptcy filing soon, San Jose, CA-based Calpine Corp. received a reprieve of sorts in a Delaware court on Friday, giving the company until Jan. 22 to return $313 million to bondholders from the sale last summer of substantially all of it oil and natural gas assets.

FERC last Tuesday gave Southern Natural Gas about a five-month reprieve to complete and put into service its Phase II pipeline looping and compression facilities to meet the expanding natural gas demand of industrial and power generation customers in the Southeast.

FERC on Tuesday gave Southern Natural Gas about a five-month reprieve to complete and put into service its Phase II pipeline looping and compression facilities to meet the expanding natural gas demand of industrial and power generation customers in the Southeast.

FERC has granted Greenbrier Pipeline Co. LLC’s request for a two-year extension to build and put into operation its proposed 279-mile pipeline that would serve local distributors and power generators in the Mid-Atlantic region.