Sunday

El Paso lifted Tuesday a declaration of a Strained Operating Condition for high linepack that had been issued Sunday. “Performance in the supply areas has improved and customer response has been sufficient to decrease…linepack to acceptable levels,” the pipeline said. It added that it also was ending a suspension of Interruptible Storage Service.

Chesapeake Energy Corp. late Sunday scored a sixth U.S. onshore joint exploration agreement and its second with China’s CNOOC Ltd. (China National Offshore Oil Corp.) in a transaction valued at more than $1.26 billion.

While much of the East Coast was still digging out from Sunday’s blizzard, as evidenced by some cash point averages jumping several dollars for Tuesday delivery, natural gas futures traders on Monday were focusing on the future, which is why the January contract — a day ahead of expiration — dipped below $4 for the third time in two weeks before rallying to close at $4.112, up 2.9 cents from last Thursday’s finish.

Republican candidate Joe Miller on Sunday said he will not oppose Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) being certified as the victor in Alaska’s U.S. Senate race, but he will continue with his federal lawsuit challenging the state’s vote count.

Southern said Friday its market-area forecast called for warmer temperatures Saturday “and then turning dramatically colder for Sunday and even colder into [this] week.” It was extremely likely that storage withdrawal requirements would exceed system capability coming out of the weekend, Southern said, so an OFO Type 6 for short imbalances will take effect Monday until further notice. Tiered penalties will apply to negative daily imbalances exceeding 2% or 200 Dth, whichever is greater. Southern added that it will not be accepting nominations for due-shipper imbalance makeups and will evaluate on each scheduling cycle nominations for interruptible services that rely on storage withdrawals.

Pacific Gas and Electric allowed a systemwide high-inventory OFO to expire Sunday after it had been in effect for the previous three days.

Florida Gas Transmission kept an Overage Alert Day, implemented Friday, in place through Saturday before ending it Sunday.

Matthew R. Simmons, 67, who founded Simmons & Co. International in 1974, died on Sunday in Maine.

Pacific Gas and Electric had a systemwide high-inventory OFO in effect Sunday but discontinued it Monday.