Spot

With fresh forecasts and other signs hinting at a potential early start of heating season, gas buyers were spurred to keep pushing their storage injection schedules and to acquire supplies for immediate burns in the northern U.S. and Canada, where chilly start-of-fall temperatures have more furnaces getting turned on as the week progresses. The result Tuesday was further price increases, nearly all of them in double digits. The upticks ranged from a little under a dime to nearly 30 cents; most of those over 20 cents occurred at Rockies/San Juan/Pacific Northwest points.

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) is predicting that natural gas spot prices will remain in the $4.80-$5.50/MMBtu range for the rest of 2003, assuming normal weather. Natural gas wellhead prices are projected to average $4.97/Mcf for the year, an increase of about $2/Mcf over the 2002 annual average, which will be the largest annual wellhead price increase on record, EIA said in its September Short Term Energy Outlook.

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) is predicting that natural gas spot prices will remain in the $4.80-$5.50/MMBtu range for the rest of 2003, assuming normal weather. Natural gas wellhead prices are projected to average $4.97/Mcf for the year, an increase of about $2/Mcf over the 2002 annual average, which will be the largest annual wellhead price increase on record, EIA said in its September Short Term Energy Outlook.

The Maritimes natural gas market is “working as well as could be expected” for a small market without gas storage facilities or a liquid spot market, Canada’s National Energy Board (NEB) concluded last week in a new energy market assessment, its first report on the health of the Maritimes gas market since its decision last year to reject gas export restrictions proposed by New Brunswick (see NGI, Sept. 23, 2002).

Spot prices were flat to a few cents higher at most points across the continent on Friday generally in response to the continuing rise in Nymex futures prices, but transportation-related constraints also played a role. The cash market managed to add 30-40 cents for the week at most points compared to the previous Friday, while near-month futures set the tone with a solid 55-cent gain Friday to Friday.

The Committee of Chief Risk Officers (CCRO) Thursday published its “Best Practices” recommendations for the natural gas and power industry and price publishers to follow to restore credibility and liquidity to published price indices and head off attempts by government agencies to regulate the collection of price information.

The Committee of Chief Risk Officers (CCRO) Thursday published its “Best Practices” recommendations for the natural gas and power industry and price publishers to follow to restore credibility and liquidity to published price indices and head off attempts by government agencies to regulate the collection of price information.

Despite Nymex’s nearly 20-cent tumble, spot gas prices were up sharply in many regions again on Monday. The only locations in the red compared to Friday were in Texas and parts of the Midcontinent. Meanwhile, New York and New England prices soared, at some points by more than $2 to more than $10/MMBtu.

No longer believers in the Enron Corp. energy trading mantra that “bigger is better,” Mirant Corp. and Reliant Resources Inc. executives said Thursday that the focus now is on cash — finding it, paying off debts with it and keeping as much of it as they can. They both conceded that for them, anyway, physical gas trading has not become a cash cow.