Tuned

The earnings season for North America’s oil and natural gas companies kicks off Monday with Halliburton Co., and analysts will be tuned in for signals about where capital spending is going in 2012. Many admit that it’s been difficult to get a fix, in part because of global economic turmoil, but also because of relentless domestic natural gas production.

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan on Thursday fine-tuned his message on liquefied natural gas (LNG) in his second appearance before Congress in less than a month, saying that the United States at a minimum ought to have a “standby LNG system” in place to lessen price volatility in the domestic gas market. But he signaled that the nation should work in the longer term to eliminate it as a back-up by producing “far more” domestic gas supplies.