Team

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has added two more constables to its Dawson Creek, BC, investigations team following two more bombings along EnCana Corp. natural gas pipeline sites.

Forming what one pro-environmental group called a “green dream team,” President-elect Barack Obama has settled on Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu, who runs the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California, to be secretary of the Department of Energy (DOE) in his administration, and has selected experienced regulators to oversee three other offices dealing with energy, environmental and climate-change issues, Washington sources said. No formal announcement, however, had been issued last week.

While one analyst team sees a 50% chance for a late-summer gas price collapse, another warned last week that a projected 250 Bcf year-over-year storage deficit at injection season’s end could set the stage for Henry Hub price spikes, given the continued dearth of incremental liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies available to the United States.

While one analyst team sees a 50% chance for a late-summer gas price collapse, another warned this week that a projected 250 Bcf year-over-year storage deficit at injection season’s end could set the stage for Henry Hub price spikes, given the continued dearth of incremental liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies available to the United States.

The normally bullish energy team with Raymond James & Associates Inc. Monday said U.S. natural gas prices may rally toward the end of this year, but plentiful supplies and an overabundance of storage could lead to a “disaster” in 2008.

Like any decent sports team, Spokane, WA-based Avista Corp. posted more wins than losses this month in the wake of selling its trading/marketing arm, Avista Energy, to Shell’s Coral Energy Holding LP. Nevertheless, on a preliminary basis, Avista Energy showed a loss of 14 cents/diluted share for the first quarter this year, compared to 10 cents/diluted share in profits for the same period last year, the parent company reported last Wednesday. The Avista utility unit also lost a state of Washington court fight over a proposed new electric transmission line.

ExxonMobil Corp. expects to ramp up more than 20 new global oil and natural gas projects in the next three years that at their peak will add 1 MMboe/d to the producer’s base volumes. Scheduled U.S. start-ups between 2008 and 2009 are the Piceance Tight Gas Phase 1 project in the Rocky Mountains, the deepwater Thunder Horse platform in the Gulf of Mexico and the Golden Pass LNG [liquefied natural gas] import terminal near Sabine Pass, TX.

EnCana Corp.’s management team said Thursday they were glad to see the turn to colder weather in the past month, a sign that some of the company’s natural gas-directed drilling soon will be back on track.

EnCana Corp.’s management team said last week the turn to colder weather in the past month is a sign that some of the company’s natural gas-directed drilling soon will be back on track.