Slashing

Coming as no surprise due to the recent announcements that exploration and production companies are slashing their drilling prospects because of unfavorable natural gas commodity prices, Houston-based offshore drilling contractor Global Marine reported that its worldwide Summary of Current Offshore Rig Economics (SCORE) for September 2001 decreased by 4.3% from the previous month.

The two major electronic natural gas trading systems havestarted a price war, slashing transaction fees to zero at multiplelocations for the month of September. In late August, Altra EnergyTechnologies announced a “Streamline Inventory Reduction Sale,”reducing prices to 0.001 cent/MMBtu at all its major Louisiana andTexas locations and dropping fees to zero at all of its othertrading points. Soon after, QuickTrade countered by dropping feesto 0.001 cent/MMBtu for day trades at major Louisiana an Texaspoints and Chicago, and cutting costs to zero for day trades at theColumbia Gas pool and the Henry Hub.