Totally

The estimates of the amount of natural gas yet to be unearthed through hydraulic fracturing or “fracgas” vary widely, but there is a “determined limit” on coal-to-gas substitution that is “far short of driving coal out of the power market,” according to a new study by members of the Yale Graduates Energy Study Group.

Apparently any “storm hype,” which seemed to help buoy the market earlier in the week, was getting totally dismissed as prices sank at all but one point Friday, most often by double-digit amounts. Instead, the near-imminent diminution of most remaining cooling load and the weekend factor of considerably lower industrial demand were more persuasive to traders in sending cash prices lower.

The cash market finally bowed — but not totally — to the reality of weak weather fundamentals and the steadily diminishing possibility of Tropical Storm Florence even reaching North America, much less the Gulf of Mexico. Although a majority of points recorded moderate losses Thursday, there were still quite a few that were flat to a dime higher.

“The industry’s acreage land grab of the last five years is largely over. Virtually every conventional and unconventional gas resource play in the U.S. is totally locked up. The winners for the next 10 to 20 years have already been chosen and the losers will pay the price for years to come for being left behind.”

“The industry’s acreage land grab of the last five years is largely over. Virtually every conventional and unconventional gas resource play in the U.S. is totally locked up. The winners for the next 10 to 20 years have already been chosen and the losers will pay the price for years to come for being left behind.”

A producer-marketer group has called on FERC to “reject and totally disregard” Southwest Gas Corp.’s emergency plea for a five-month extension of the deadline to convert full-requirements (FR) transportation service on El Paso Natural Gas to contract demand (CD) service. But Public Service Company of New Mexico (PNM), who like Southwest Gas is an FR shipper, believes that deferring the conversion from Nov. 1 to April 2003 is the right thing to do to protect gas customers in the southwestern region next winter.

Pacific Gas & Electric did not extend a systemwidehigh-inventory OFO (see Daily GPI, Oct. 23) beyond Saturday.

The effects of deregulation are still being felt by AGLResources, the parent of the now-totally unbundled Atlanta GasLight, as 151 employees, or 7% of the workforce, has been cut sinceAugust, the company said recently. No more layoffs are expected,although the company did say it is always looking for ways toimprove efficiency.

The following is a clarification of a story titled “NGC’sCapacity Posting,” which ran in Daily GPI, April 22: Thecalculations and conclusions described in the story were totallythose of Michael J. Harris of the Reed Consulting Group ascontained in a FERC filing made by the producers protesting the NGCcapacity contracts on El Paso. The Prebon Energy brokerage housemade no predictions. A footnote to the filing says Prebon, whichhas offices in Jersey City, NJ, and Houston, supplied futurequotes at a specific time – 11:30 a.m. on March 30 – of the SanJuan Basin-California border basis differential. The quoted remarksregarding the expected San Juan-SoCal basis differential for thefuture and the attractiveness of the NGC capacity to other shipperswere those of Harris and the Reed Consulting group. Further Prebonsays it did not give basis information to Mr. Harris or the ReedConsulting Group but that the basis information attributed toPrebon was supplied by one of the parties to the filing. NGIregrets the error.