Widely

Natural gas pricing Tuesday was widely varied with the overall market showing an average loss of a dime. Once the high-flying New England pipelines such as Algonquin, Tennessee and Iroquois are factored out, however, the market actually showed a gain of 13 cents.

The overall cash market averaged close to 8 cents higher Friday, but if the widely fluctuating gains and losses of eastern points are subtracted, the market fell close to a nickel for weekend and Monday deliveries.

While the potential is widely recognized, a shale boom in Mexico akin to the rest of North America is unlikely any time soon, an analyst with the Houston office of Wood Mackenzie told NGI.

“Profitable and widely applicable” practices have the potential to reduce methane emissions in the United States by more than 80%, and the captured methane could “bring in billions of dollars in revenue while benefiting the environment,” according to a report from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

While its investments with Chesapeake Energy Corp. in Barnett and Utica shale gas and oil plays have been widely publicized, Paris-based Total SA also is quietly investing in a major research and development (R&D) project looking at in-ground ways to develop oil shale, an unrealized dream of energy independence that the industry and some policymakers have flirted with for decades.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has struck from its meeting agenda Thursday a much-anticipated and widely criticized final rule to define “swap dealers” and “major swap participants.” The rule is one of the most contentious before the Commission and would lay the groundwork for the agency to proceed with other regulatory reforms under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act.

January natural gas declined Wednesday largely in concert with the petroleum complex and as traders braced for a government storage report with widely varying estimates but nonetheless anticipated to show a decline significantly less than historical averages. At the close January had slid 6.6 cents to $3.421 and February had given up 6.5 cents to $3.458. January crude oil dropped 79 cents to $100.49/bbl.

As had been widely expected (see Daily GPI, Nov. 23), an investor group led by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. LP (KKR) has agreed to pay $7.2 billion for Samson Investment Co. of Tulsa, one of the largest privately held exploration and production (E&P) companies in the United States. The group is picking up all of Samson’s assets, including shale play holdings, except for its onshore Gulf Coast and deepwater Gulf of Mexico (GOM) assets.

Energy experts predict that natural gas will surpass coal and become the second most widely used fossil fuel on Earth by 2030, but said challenges remain for the industry to make that a reality.