Rest

There was a lot of contrast in price movement Thursday. After leaving the rest of the market way behind with numbers that had topped $20 in some cases the day before, Northeast citygates started to come back down to earth with multi-dollar plunges. Meanwhile, most other points (outside the Rockies) soared by about 30 cents or more. Some Gulf Coast pipes saw dollar-plus advances, with others there and in the Midcontinent rising nearly a dollar.

Just when producers thought it was safe to head back into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, Hurricane Lili appeared on the horizon ready to take another big bite out of Gulf gas production. Isidore forced 25 Bcf of gas to be shut in last week, according to the Minerals Management Service (MMS). It looks as though Lili could force a repeat of that situation this week, according to the latest reports from producers.

After carving out an 8.5-cent trading range during the first 50 minutes of trading Tuesday, natural gas futures settled down and chopped lazily sideways for the remainder of the session. The October contract finished at $3.356, down 4.3 cents for the day and just above its $3.34 low. At just 72,545, estimated volume was indicative of a market that is uncertain what forces will impact the natural gas futures market on Sept. 11.

Unocal Corp. announced plans to pick up the remaining 35% of Pure Resources Inc. which it does not already own, offering 0.6527 shares of Unocal common stock for each outstanding share of Pure’s common stock. The transaction is valued at about $400 million based on Unocal’s current share price.

Putting to rest a long-running bitter feud, Southwest Gas has agreed to pay Southern Union $17.5 million to settle claims of fraud and bad faith breach of contract related to Southern Union’s attempts to purchase Southwest. Following on the mid-week announcement by the two companies, Oneok Inc. said Friday it had agreed to pay $3 million to Southwest Gas in settlement of other litigation related to the three-way wrangle.

Putting to rest a long-running bitter feud, Southwest Gas has agreed to pay Southern Union $17.5 million to settle claims of fraud and bad faith breach of contract related to Southern Union’s attempts to purchase Southwest.

Analysts at Raymond James & Associates took a double-blade axe to their natural gas price forecast for the rest of the year, chopping an entire dollar off the prices they are expecting to see in the third and fourth quarters. They based the change on the likelihood that gas prices will crash when the full level of storage is reached well before the end of the injection season.

Analysts at Raymond James & Associates took a double-blade axe to their natural gas price forecast for the rest of the year, chopping an entire dollar off the prices they are expecting to see in the third and fourth quarters. They based the change on the likelihood that gas prices will crash when the full level of storage is reached well before the end of the injection season.

Power customers in the Southwest can rest a little easier now that Duke Energy North America signed a power supply deal with cash strapped Nevada Power Co. and Sierra Pacific Power, two utility subsidiaries of Sierra Pacific Resources that serve much of Nevada and the Lake Tahoe portion of California. The utilities were in serious danger of entering the summer without adequate supply arrangements because of a credit crisis caused by a recent regulatory decision that disallowed recovery of millions in past power costs.