Substantially

“Why is May masquerading as January?” A source’s somewhat tongue-in-cheek rhetorical question succinctly described why nearly all of the market continued to soften substantially Monday and why a significant rally seems unlikely until the latter half of January — if then.

Traders had suggestions but were unable to come up with a convincing explanation for why prices rose, often substantially, at most points Thursday after so much preceding bearishness about lack of heating load and a steep screen slide that extended into its third day.

Looking to raise its production output in Texas, Burlington Resources Inc. has reached a $400 million agreement to acquire substantially all the assets of a privately held company that is a co-owner with Burlington in the prolific Savell Field in the Bossier trend of East Texas. Burlington said the acquisition will “significantly increase” the company’s production in the field and raise its Bossier trend leaseholdings to approximately 200,000 net acres.

Skyrocketing wholesale natural gas prices have had a mixed impact on New Mexico, said PNM Resources CEO Jeff Sterba. The positive side has been substantially higher revenues to the state for the higher-priced oil and gas production. The negative has been the cost impact on consumers.

Salt Lake City-based Questar Corp. reports its Rocky Mountain exploration/production has stepped up substantially, compared with a year earlier, in the Pinedale (WY) Anticline, and it reaffirmed its guidance for E&P operations this year at 112-114 Bcfe. Questar made the announcement as part of an investor tour Tuesday of its Pinedale operations.

Expansion of the U.S. natural gas pipeline grid slowed substantially in 2004 with only 7.7 Bcf/d of capacity added, but the current inventory of proposed projects indicates that major growth will take place between 2005 and 2007, with potentially as much as 44.4 Bcf/d of new capacity added to the national network, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said Tuesday in a new report.

As the screen giveth, so can the screen taketh away. That was the gist of opinion about substantially higher cash prices Tuesday that are expected to be followed by equally substantial declines in Wednesday’s quotes.

ExxonMobil Corp. on Friday vowed to appeal a decision by a Louisiana appeals court, even though the court substantially reduced punitive damages against the oil giant in connection with a eight-year-old lawsuit brought by a family over contaminated land. Exxon said in a statement that the compensatory and punitive awards still were “excessive and unjustified.”

Substantially cold weather has largely receded into Canada and the northern tier of American states, but the cash market found enough of it still around to stage moderate rebounds Monday at a majority of points. The screen’s 3.5-cent gain on the preceding Friday and the return of industrial load from its usual weekend hiatus provided small amounts of ancillary support.