Sagging

Northeast Pennsylvania Marcellus Shale producers got some relief from sagging prices when El Paso Corp.’s Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co. placed its long-awaited 300 Line forward-haul expansion in service, increasing capacity on the Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) system by 350 MMcf/d, a nearly 50% boost.

Northeast Pennsylvania Marcellus Shale producers got some relief from sagging prices when El Paso Corp.’s Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co. placed its long-awaited 300 Line forward-haul expansion in service, increasing capacity on the Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) system by 350 MMcf/d, a nearly 50% boost.

Continuing to take cues from the sagging natural gas futures complex, cash market values far and wide slid for a second straight day on Wednesday, shrugging off forecasts for a heat-wave return for much of the East.

Marathon Oil Corp. is dipping its toes into the liquids-rich Eagle Ford Shale play in South Texas through a deal with Houston-based Denali Oil & Gas, the company said Monday.

With Thursday’s supportive storage build even failing to prop up the sagging natural gas futures market, the September contract on Friday was free to probe even lower price levels. September natural gas reached a low of $4.109 before closing the regular session at $4.117, down 5.4 cents from Thursday’s finish and 21.1 cents lower than the previous week’s close.

Despite sagging revenues in 1Q2007, Dynegy Inc. last week reported that net income swung from a 1Q2006 loss of $4 million, or a loss of $0.01 per diluted share, to a gain of $14 million, or $0.03 per diluted share for the first quarter 2007. The first quarter profit, which marked the company’s first profitable period in the last five quarters, was attributed to the strong performance from its power generation portfolio and to higher power prices.

Helped lower by sagging crude oil futures and doubts surrounding just how cold the coming “cold front” will be, March natural gas futures started Tuesday’s session more than 10 cents lower than Monday’s close and continued lower into territory not seen since last summer. The prompt month put in a new front-month low before settling at $7.858, down 13.7 cents from Monday’s finish.

Prices fell across the board Tuesday as traders had anticipated, and most declines were larger than the ones on Monday. The usual suspects depressed the market: little hot-weather load in most areas, the previous day’s futures plunge, a sense of burgeoning storage inventories overall (despite the fire loss at the Moss Bluff facility) and a streak of no tropical storm threats to offshore production that is approaching two weeks now.

Although it won’t boost its still-sagging credit rating, Nevada Power Co.’s financial push last week drew a positive response for Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services (S&P) last Wednesday when it labeled as a “positive development” the utility’s new short-term credit facility with Merrill Lynch. It provides additional liquidity this summer for Nevada Power, one of two private-sector electric utilities under Reno, NV-based Sierra Pacific Resources.