Settling

Breaking the five-day string of settling lower, the Nymex May natural gas futures contract on Tuesday fought its way to a gain of 4.4 cents. After falling to a low of $5.485 around noon eastern time, the prompt month spent the rest of the afternoon clawing its way back up to settle at $5.553.

The price fires got reignited Thursday in the shivering Northeast, only a day after early-week spikes had appeared to be settling down for the most part. Transco Zone 6-New York City prices topped out at $17.50 in super-volatile trading that saw the same point quoted at less than $9. Other Northeast points saw triple-digit gains in a few cases.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has brought in a total of $43 million in civil monetary penalties this week to settle charges of attempted gas market manipulation and false price reporting by three natural gas trading companies, including Enserco Energy, which paid $3 million on Thursday. Enserco’s fine followed $20 million each from EnCana and Williams earlier in the week (see Daily GPI, July 30, July 29).

In two days this week, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has drawn $40 million in fines for attempted natural gas market manipulation and false price reporting to gas index publications. On Monday, the CFTC announced a $20 million settlement agreement with EnCana, and on Tuesday a nearly identical settlement was reached with The Williams Companies and subsidiary Williams Energy Marketing and Trading, the CFTC said (see Daily GPI, July 29).

El Paso Corp. is making “very good progress” in moving toward a settlement of allegations that it withheld transportation capacity from the California market to ratchet up prices for natural gas during the energy crisis in 2000 and 2001, said the company’s new chairman, Ronald L. Kuehn Jr.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) agreed to a $3 million settlement with Dynegy Inc. Tuesday, settling the first of its far-reaching investigations of energy merchants’ “round-trip” transactions. It also completed its scrutiny of a Dynegy off-balance sheet transaction.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) agreed to a $3 million settlement with Dynegy Inc. Tuesday, settling the first of its far-reaching “round-trip” energy probes, as well as completing its scrutiny of an off-balance sheet transaction.

There was a strong bull rally in gas futures yesterday. Afterbusting through and settling above the $3 barrier on Wednesday, Maysurged 6.6 cents higher to a new high of $3.087, a couple centsfrom its daily high of $3.105 and a greater distance from its$3.045 low for the day. The summer strip closed up 6.8 cents at anew high of $3.11, and the 12-month strip set a new high at $3.116.

Kansas City Power & Light and Western Resources successfully reached an agreement with the FERC settling all merger-related issues, Western Resources said last week. The company also said the agreement forged between the merging parties and the Missouri Public Service Commission staff is currently being reviewed by the Missouri commissioners. Only the Kansas Corporation Commission (KCC) approval stands in the way of the merger’s completion, the company said.