Schedule

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) signaled that he will schedule debate this month on a bill based on a deal negotiated by Republicans Wednesday that would open up eight million acres in the eastern Gulf of Mexico to oil and natural gas leasing and would allow sharing of federal royalties from offshore production with four Gulf coastal states.

The New York Mercantile Exchange Inc. (Nymex) on Friday announced the proposed fee schedule for the initial slate of the energy futures contracts that will be offered for side-by-side trading on CME Globex, the electronic trading platform of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, on June 11 for trade date June 12. The company noted that all listed fees are quoted on a per side basis.

The New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex) solved the dilemma of how to take its electronic energy trading to a round-the-clock schedule. Nymex Holdings Inc. reported Thursday that it has entered into a technology services agreement with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), under which the CME will become the exclusive electronic trading services provider for Nymex’s energy futures and options contracts.

Anticipated colder weather arrived on schedule as advertised over the weekend and, coupled with Friday’s gain of a little more than a quarter in natural gas futures and the return of industrial load from its usual weekend hiatus, was able to generate double-digit price gains at nearly all points Monday.

Gulf South made another change in the pigging schedule for its 12-inch diameter Index 131 from Lafayette to Weeks Island in South Louisiana (see Daily GPI, Jan. 23). The work, which began Jan. 18, has been extended through Friday of this week and will resume for one day next Tuesday.

Responding to a motion from the California parties, FERC Thursday agreed to temporarily suspend its procedural schedule established in an interim guidance order it released last week. The federal regulatory process will wait for a ruling from a federal district court in New York City that has scheduled a hearing for Jan. 26 on the issue of Calpine Corp.’s bankruptcy court request to set aside eight of its power supply contracts because they are unprofitable for the Chapter 11-protected company.

MRT said a System Protection Warning initiated Dec. 31, in which the pipeline said it would be unable to schedule volumes that resulted in a net daily long imbalance position through Tuesday, will be lifted at the start of Wednesday’s gas day.

Pacific Gas & Electric did not extend a high-inventory OFO beyond Wednesday.

Production has ramped up on schedule in the Red Hawk field in the Garden Banks area of the deepwater Gulf of Mexico (GOM) using the world’s first cell spar facility, according to Kerr-McGee Oil & Gas Corp., which operates the field and is joint owner with Devon Energy Corp. The development, located in 5,300 feet of water on Garden Banks 877, has an estimated resource base of 250 Bcf.