Supplied

A well supplied market with limited prospects for demand growth in the months ahead will weigh on natural gas prices, according to BNP Paribas’ Teri Viswanath, senior natural gas strategist.

Natural gas cash points overall vaulted on average by more than a dime Wednesday as the high demand and thinly supplied Northeast registered gains approaching $1.00 or more. Points to the south of New England saw smaller gains, and the Midwest was mixed. At the close of trading December futures had eased 3.9 cents to $3.578 and January had given up 3.4 cents to $3.714. December crude oil plunged $4.27 to $84.44/bbl.

With his seventh shale-related joint venture (JV) in hand, Chesapeake Energy Corp. CEO Aubrey McClendon said Friday the company has plans to take partners in three, maybe more, U.S. leaseholds in 2012. The long-time shale promoter also claimed a leadership position for the company in the new natural gas age.

Chesapeake Energy Corp. plans to sell stakes in at least three more onshore U.S. shale plays, CEO Aubrey McClendon told energy analysts Friday, and at the same time he claimed a leadership position for the company in the new natural gas age.

The Energy Information Administration (EIA), academia, industry and analysts on Tuesday continued to question why the New York Times (NYT) relied on misleading, outdated information — and failed to contact key resources — before publishing damning articles about the U.S. shale gas industry.

Sixteen natural gas processing plants in Louisiana and Texas that had a pre-hurricane flow volume of 5.45 Bcf/d remain shut down, according to information supplied by Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman to a Senate panel last Thursday.

Sixteen natural gas processing plants in Louisiana and Texas that had a pre-hurricane flow volume of 5.45 Bcf/d remain shut down, according to information supplied by Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman to a Senate panel Thursday.

FirstEnergy Corp. sold its retail gas marketing business, FirstEnergy Solutions, to Amerada Hess Corp. on Friday. FirstEnergy Solutions supplied gas to 1,900 commercial and industrial customers in selected areas within Ohio, Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Terms of the deal weren’t released. Akron, OH-based FirstEnergy holds seven electric utility operating companies with 4.4 million customers in Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

PJM Interconnection’s market monitoring unit (MMU) has supplied staff at FERC with information related to the recent market activity of a PJM market participant after a request for such information was submitted to the grid operator by FERC’s Division of Energy Market Oversight (DEMO).