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The December aftermarket got off to a very strong start at nearly all points Thursday as the heating season’s first major winter storm, having already occupied the western two-thirds of North America, signaled its intention of invading the rest of the continent by early in the weekend. Once again, the 31.2-cent jump by January futures in their prompt-month debut Wednesday added to the fundamental weather support for cash prices.

Citing “very cold weather projections in the Pacific Northwest over the next few days and record low throughput volumes across the Canadian border,” Northwest declared a Stage II (8%) Overrun Entitlement for Receiving Parties on the Wenatchee Lateral and a Stage III Overrun Entitlement (13%) for all other Receiving Parties located north of the Kemmerer (WY) Compressor Station for the gas days of Wednesday and Thursday. Northwest said its tariff provides that an Overrun Entitlement will subject a receiving party to penalties if the party’s takes of gas exceed its confirmed nominations by more than the allowed threshold percentage. Northwest said it “encourages customers to secure adequate supplies from Canadian supply sources during this cold period.”

Despite all of the independent and government forecasts that were calling for a very active 2006 Atlantic hurricane season, the resulting slightly below average activity — which was welcomed by the southern U.S. coastline as well as Gulf of Mexico oil and gas producers — was blamed on a late-developing El Nino and increased dryness in the tropical Atlantic, according to William Gray and Philip Klotzbach of the Colorado State University forecast team.

Despite independent and government forecasts that called for a very active 2006 Atlantic hurricane season, the resulting slightly below-average activity — which was welcomed by the southern U.S. coastline as well as Gulf of Mexico oil and gas producers — was blamed on a late-developing El Nino and increased dryness in the tropical Atlantic, according to William Gray and Philip Klotzbach of the Colorado State University forecast team.

With futures guidance having turned neutral Tuesday, spreading cold weather not yet getting very severe, and something of a feeling that the cash market spikes of the previous two days might have been overly exuberant, prices fell at most points Wednesday.

The trio of producers hoping to develop a pipeline to deliver Alaska natural gas to Canada and the Lower 48 could very well be negotiating the deal with a new governor since Gov. Frank Murkowski was soundly defeated in his bid for re-election in the state’s Republican primary Tuesday.

The U.S. is entering “an era when mergers are going to be more difficult again” and will “only be easy in places where there’s a very troubled utility,” Exelon Corp. CEO John Rowe said last Thursday in remarks made at the Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. strategic decisions conference in New York City.

Natural gas producers are responding “very aggressively” to the price signals in the market by stepping up production activity, but production volumes are expected to remain flat at best without access to new resources, said the chairman of a major gas producer group Tuesday.

The California Energy Commission (CEC) Wednesday vented its frustration with FERC by claiming that federal regulators were barring access to critical safety information that was needed by the state to carry out its review of the joint federal-Port of Long Beach draft environmental impact report (EIR) on a proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving terminal in the harbor.