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The Fayetteville Shale of Arkansas is showing a lot of promise for natural gas producers. Now, two advocacy groups hope that promise translates into more dollars for Arkansas residents.

The Fayetteville Shale of Arkansas is showing a lot of promise for natural gas producers. Now, two advocacy groups hope that promise translates into more dollars for Arkansas residents.

Showing that increased trading activity of Nymex contracts through the Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s (CME) electronic Globex platform is not denting the volumes on its own exchange (see NGI, Nov. 6), rival electronic energy marketplace IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) reported Monday that volume and commissions during the month of November more than doubled from levels in November 2005.

Showing that increased trading activity of Nymex contracts through the Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s (CME) electronic Globex platform is not denting the volumes on its exchange in the least (see Daily GPI, Nov. 1), rival electronic energy marketplace IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) reported Monday that volume and commissions during the month of November more than doubled the figures from November 2005. In addition, ICE Futures, ICE’s London-based regulated futures subsidiary, boasted that for the month of November it averaged approximately 50% market share in global crude futures as measured by volume of light sweet crude oil.

Scrambling to make up ground in opinion polls showing his gubernatorial campaign trailing the incumbent, California State Treasurer Phil Angelides Friday stood on a bluff in Malibu overlooking the Pacific Ocean and declared he is opposed to BHP Billiton’s proposal to build an offshore liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving terminal about a dozen miles out to sea.

A security tape showing two people cutting a fence to scale a storage tank at KeySpan Corp’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) storage facility in Lynn, MA, last week has sparked a number of investigations at the local and state level, even though the incident appears to be an act of vandalism rather than terrorism, a company spokeswoman said.

With the heat expected to continue boosting power generation demand through the weekend and futures showing no signs of weakness, the week-long cash market rally pressed on Friday although it lost some steam at some locations in the Northeast, particularly Iroquois Zone 2, which had been one of the hottest points over the course of the week. Iroquois prices were flat in the mid $7.60s, but Dracut and Tennessee Zone 6 added more than 30 cents.

Showing improvement, albeit modest, Sierra Pacific Resources Friday reported earnings for the first quarter of $1.2 million, or a penny/share, compared to a $9.5 million loss, or an 8 cents/share, for the same period last year. There was continued strong growth at both of the company’s Nevada utilities, but the largest utility, Nevada Power Co., still recorded a loss in the first quarter.

Natural gas markets worldwide are showing increasing convergence, particularly among the Organization of Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD) countries, and that trend, spurred by increased liquefied natural gas (LNG) traffic, is expected to continue, according to Raymond James’ Energy Stat of the Week.