Went

After a week where the natural gas futures market went in a different direction every session, trading on Friday broke the mold as the session added to Thursday’s losses. The May contract closed out the week at $9.322, down 9.5 cents from Thursday’s finish and 47.8 cents lower than the previous week’s close.

Coming off a Monday that featured a jittery Wall Street and a titanic tumble in energy commodities, April natural gas futures on Tuesday went into correction mode as some traders suggested that a more sideways-trending market coupled with high volatility lies ahead in the near term. The prompt-month contract reached a high of $9.420 before closing out the day at $9.414, up 31.4 cents from Monday.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) Tuesday went on an environmental and climate change shopping spree by launching a wildlife protection program in its ongoing utility operations and purchasing more than $2 million in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions credits for forest conservation in two separate areas of Northern California. PG&E touted the effort as a potential model for other utilities.

Natural gas futures traders on Thursday once again tested resistance up at $9.050 and once again found it a little too rich for their liking as the March contract went on to record a low of $8.890 before closing out the day at $8.891, down 7.4 cents from Wednesday’s close.

Taking a break from the passive expirations of recent months, the January natural gas futures contract went on a roller-coaster ride in the last hour of trading Thursday, soaring from $6.885 to a high of $7.240 before going off of the board at $7.172, up 12.6 cents from Wednesday’s close.

West Virginia legislators went home for the rest of the year Tuesday without acting on Gov. Joe Manchin’s proposed legislation that sought to rewrite the state’s royalty law.

July natural gas futures went out with a bang on Wednesday as the contract broke two significant patterns en route to its close at $6.929, up 5.2 cents from Tuesday. Not only did the contract break the streak of seven consecutive regular session lower closes, it also was the first expiring prompt-month contract in five months not to go off the board in the $7.50s.

The Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel (OCC) went public last week in opposition to a request by Columbia Gas of Ohio to collect from its customers any current or future costs related to an investigation of natural gas risers, which are the vertical portion of the service line that connect the pipeline to the customer’s meter. The residential consumer utility advocate said in a filing at the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) that the costs associated with the risers, or the investigation of the risers, should not fall to consumers.

The Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel (OCC) went public Wednesday in opposition to a request by Columbia Gas of Ohio to collect from its customers any current or future costs related to an investigation of natural gas risers, which are the vertical portion of the service line that connect the pipeline to the customer’s meter. The residential consumer utility advocate said in a filing at the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) that the costs associated with the risers, or the investigation of the risers, should not fall to consumers.