Seemed

What has seemed inevitable for most of this year happened Friday with the announcement by Southern California Edison Co. (SCE) that it plans to retire its trouble-riddled San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (Songs) along the Southern California coast. Utility and state energy officials increasingly have been planning for the loss of the region’s major baseload power source for some time (see Daily GPI, May 29).

The U.S. Geologic Survey’s (USGS) assessment of the Williston Basin’s Bakken Shale and Three Forks formation in North Dakota, Montana and South Dakota, which combined was estimated at 7.4 billion bbl of technically recoverable oil, is “very conservative,” according to North Dakota’s chief oil and gas regulator.

The physical natural gas market on average moved a penny lower Wednesday, as buyers seemed content with mild weather to rely mostly on baseload volumes. Points in and around the Great Lakes were up by a couple of pennies and around the Gulf, prices held within a 2-cent range of unchanged. Rockies points were mostly unchanged as well. Futures gained on light volume as players positioned themselves ahead of Thursday’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) storage report. At the close of trading, June futures had risen 5.8 cents to $3.978 and July closed 5.6 cents higher at $4.030. June crude oil gained $1.00 to $96.62/bbl.

eCorp International LLC and a property owners organization in New York have decided to scrap a “complex” plan to create a company indirectly owned by the landowners and will return to the drawing board, delaying the possibility of bringing waterless hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to the Empire State.

The odds seemed stacked against a cash price rally following Friday’s November futures decline of 11.7 cents and mild to cool temperatures continuing to dominate the overall post-weekend weather forecasts. But somehow the market managed to pull it off, although the restoration of industrial demand from its usual weekend dropoff was only a marginal bullish factor.

Arrival of some heating load fails to offset recognition of generally weak weather fundamentals.

California’s Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors decided Tuesday night to hold off on a ban of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and instead add well permitting requirements to require individual approvals by the county’s planning and development department.

May natural gas futures continued their slide as traders reported no interest by commercial players and seemed resigned to the ongoing slump. Expectations are for a withdrawal in Thursday’s inventory report, but that is seen as little help to the bullish cause. At the end of the day May had retreated another 8.5 cents to $4.146 and June had given up 8.4 cents to $4.220. May crude oil continued its run higher, adding 49 cents to $108.83/bbl.

Following a week in which weather across Canada and much of the northern U.S. seemed more appropriate for winter than the still-young spring season — keeping spot prices mostly flat or firmer — just a few areas of significant heating load remained Monday. The upshot was falling prices at most points.