Rockies

A barely higher Cheyenne Hub in the Rockies was the only point that avoided falling prices Wednesday. The factors that have caused softness in post-Christmas trading at nearly all points were unchanged — light heating load due to unseasonably moderate weather for late December, prior-day futures weakness and bearish attitudes about abundant storage.

To accommodate additional supply coming in from the Rockies Express pipeline and from the Midcontinent and Canada, Boardwalk Pipeline Partners LP said Wednesday that subsidiary Texas Gas Transmission LLC is planning a third expansion of its gas storage operations that would add 113,900 MMBtu/d of deliverability and 10.25 trillion Btu of working gas capacity to its total storage operations, which includes nine fields in Indiana and Kentucky.

Elected officials in the historic town of Astoria, OR, with slightly less than 10,000 population and a legacy as the first permanent U.S. settlement west of the Rockies, voted last month to intervene at FERC in the proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal project slated for Bradwood Landing. The Astoria City Council voted 4-0 in a special meeting last Thursday to take the action Earlier in the week elected officials in a neighboring city and Clatsop County also took similar action.

The federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has issued a notice of intent (NOI) to prepare an environmental impact statement and related scoping process for two combined Rockies gas exploration and development plays planned by Devon Energy Corp. and BP, covering potentially up to 8,950 new natural gas wells in what the BLM has designated as the “Continental Divide-Creston Natural Gas Project.”

CIG declared an OFO Saturday because of the extremely cold weather in its market area, then ended it Sunday. Wellhead freeze-offs in the Rockies limited the amount of supply that CIG could deliver to Xcel Energy’s Public Service Co. of Colorado utility, resulting in rolling power outages of brief duration Saturday (see related story).

FERC approved a new market link for Rockies gas Tuesday, giving the go-ahead for construction of EnCana’s Entrega Gas Pipeline, featuring 328 miles of 36- and 42-inch, line from the Piceance Basin through the Wamsutter Basin and Hub in Sweetwater County, WY, to the Cheyenne gas trading hub in Weld County, CO, where several eastbound pipelines converge.

Denver-based independent Bill Barrett Corp., which has pinned its future on finding oil and natural gas in the Rockies, on Thursday reported that production in the second quarter was 8.6 Bcfe, up from 8.1 Bcfe for the same period a year ago. However, the company reported a net loss of $15.9 million, compared with net income of $3 million in 2Q2004 after taking a noncash impairment on some of its Wind River Basin properties.

Just days after Enterprise Products Partners LP bought the remaining stake in its partnership from El Paso Corp., the company said it will begin beefing up its existing natural gas liquids (NGL) fractionator at the Mont Belvieu complex by 15,000 bbl/d to a total of 225,000 bbl/d, as part of a plan to pump up production from the prolific Rocky Mountain basins.

Just days after Enterprise Products Partners LP bought the remaining stake in its partnership from El Paso Corp. (see Daily GPI, Jan. 18), the energy partnership announced that it will expand its existing natural gas liquids (NGL) fractionator at the Mont Belvieu complex by 15,000 bbl/d to a total of 225,000 bbl/d, which will increase production from the prolific Rocky Mountain basins.