Widely

International traffic in Canadian natural gas held firm through spring, postponing a widely forecast time of reckoning when soft prices and weakened drilling are expected to erode the trade, National Energy Board records show.

International traffic in Canadian natural gas held firm through spring, postponing a widely forecast time of reckoning when soft prices and weakened drilling are expected to erode the trade, National Energy Board records show.

With press reports now widely indicating that hedge fund Amaranth Advisors LLC’s long position was so big that it was artificially propping up natural gas futures prices for the winter forward months, Bentek Energy President Porter Bennett warned that the only way regulators could have known about the situation was if each trading company revealed all of their positions on a frequent basis. However, he warned that such a move “would destroy the well functioning, efficient natural gas marketplace we currently have.”

With press reports now widely indicating that hedge fund Amaranth Advisors LLC’s long position was so big that it was artificially propping up natural gas futures prices for the winter forward months, Bentek Energy President Porter Bennett warned that the only way regulators could have known about the situation was if each trading company revealed all of their positions on a frequent basis. However, he warned that such a move “would destroy the well functioning, efficient natural gas marketplace we currently have.”

The widely held belief that speculators in the futures market were behind the sharp run-up in natural gas prices over the past year has no basis in fact, said Commissioner Sharon Brown-Hruska of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) last Tuesday.

The widely held belief that speculators in the futures market were behind the sharp run-up in natural gas prices over the past year has no basis in fact, said Commissioner Sharon Brown-Hruska of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Tuesday.

In issuing its updated March-April weather outlook Wednesday morning, MDA EarthSat Energy Weather said temperatures will be vary fairly widely over different regions of the United States..

Despite its newly announced, widely praised settlement, Sempra Energy still faces four outstanding legal actions by the California Attorney General’s Office — three in the courts and one at FERC — and the AG’s spokesperson said Thursday the state law enforcement office plans to fully pursue all of the cases, alleging that California consumers are still due restitution for being “ripped off” during the 2000-2001 energy crisis by Sempra and some of its companies. Industry observers and regulators don’t think these outstanding lawsuits lessen the significant financial value of the settlement, and in addition they point to more than $1.5 billion in noncash value from the agreement for both the state and company.

With $2 billion in debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing from two major banks, San Jose, CA-based Calpine Corp. as widely expected filed for voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy Tuesday in the same federal court in lower Manhattan in which Enron Corp. four years earlier made a similar filing.