Waste

With so many proposed new pipelines and expansions in the works to serve the wild demand growth in California, Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP and Calpine Corp. wasted no time last week in marketing space on their massive $1.7 billion gas pipeline project, which was announced last week (see Daily GPI, May 3). The companies launched an open season on Monday to take binding market requests for service through June 1 on their 1,030-mile Sonoran Pipeline.

With so many proposed new pipelines and expansions in the works to serve the wild demand growth in California, Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP and Calpine Corp. wasted no time this week in marketing space on their massive $1.7 billion gas pipeline project, which was announced last week (see Daily GPI, May 3). The companies launched an open season yesterday to take binding market requests for service through June 1 on their 1,030-mile Sonoran Pipeline.

After trading within an extremely tight, 3.5-cent range for mostof yesterday’s session, natural gas futures were lifted by a waveof buying that hit the market literally seconds after the AmericanGas Association released one of its most bullish storage reports sofar this injection season.

Almost as fast as they had gone up Tuesday, cash prices headedback down Wednesday. In one of the quickest hit-and-run operationsever mounted on Gulf of Mexico production, Earl achieved hurricanestatus but was already leaving offshore platforms behind afterveering sharply eastward overnight. While the storm appeared to beheaded into Florida’s Panhandle, workers were returning toplatforms off Louisiana and Texas and the estimated 8 Bcf/d ofshut-in gas gradually started to flow again.