Sellers

The natural gas futures market continued lower Monday as sellers continued to apply pressure to a market weakened by last Thursday’s smaller-than-expected, 89 Bcf storage withdrawal. Though the selling was not especially well organized, it was effective and produced a fractionally sub-$7 settlement for the prompt contract on its penultimate trading session. April, which expires at 2:30 p.m. ET Tuesday, closed Monday at $6.999, down 6.3 cents on the day.

With sellers content with last week’s 50-cent price erosion, and bulls desperately clinging to the last vestiges of support, natural gas futures marked time Friday, with prices moving quietly sideways on mostly unchanged fundamental and technical factors.

Despite forecasts calling for up to 8 inches of snow across southern New England, natural gas futures continued lower in expiration-related selling Tuesday, as traders continued to rotate out of their December contracts. With that the prompt month came to its final resting place at $4.14, down 12.1 cents for the day. Coincidentally, December also expired 12.1 cents lower than the level at which it began its month-long tenure as prompt contract, though it ended 1.4 cents above November’s settle.

FERC Wednesday dismissed a complaint filed by the National Association of Gas Consumers (NAGC) against “all sellers of natural gas in the United States of America in interstate commerce,” which asked FERC to set a benchmark price for natural gas of $2.74/MMBtu and allow any sales above that level to be subject to complaints and refunds as unjust and unreasonable.

A group of California power generators — led by Reliant, Williams, Mirant and Dynegy — last week asked FERC to either extend the deadline for comments on whether to reduce the wholesale natural gas costs used in calculating power refunds to the state, or postpone the proceedings related to California’s request for $8.9 billion in refunds until the gas issue is settled.

A group of California power generators — led by Reliant, Williams, Mirant and Dynegy — has asked FERC to either extend the deadline for comments on whether to reduce the wholesale natural gas costs used in calculating power refunds to the state, or postpone the proceedings related to California’s request for $8.9 billion in refunds until the gas issue is settled.

FERC last Wednesday set for hearing a number of complaints filed by PacifiCorp against four energy sellers, claiming the prices set in short-term bilateral contracts for delivery of energy between July 1 and Sept. 30 of this year are unjust and unreasonable.

Declaring their responses to questions related to FERC’s probe into energy price manipulation to be either glaringly incomplete or simply not credible, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last week ordered four suppliers — El Paso Electric Co., Avista Corp., Portland General Electric and Williams Energy Marketing & Trading — to show why they shouldn’t be stripped of their authority to sell energy at unregulated rates dating back to Feb. 13 of this year, when the Commission opened its investigation into potential gaming of western power and natural gas markets.

After moving lower in the minutes following the 2 p.m. EST American Gas Association storage report showing a net 16 Bcf withdrawal, natural gas futures rebounded modestly at the close Wednesday, the third day in a row the market has moved higher in the afternoon to rescind a portion of that day’s losses. However, just like on the two previous days, the result was the same — a net loss for the prompt month. January closed at $2.491, up slightly from its $2.45 low for the session, but down 7.2 cents for the day.