Winding

As the clock was winding down for counties to sign on to the Pennsylvania Marcellus Shale impact fee, also known as Act 13, a Commonwealth Court judge pushed back the start date for portions of the law to give local governments more time to adopt its standardized zoning measures.

The long and winding road to passing a drilling impact fee in Pennsylvania hit another pothole Wednesday when nine Republican state senators whose districts are outside the Marcellus shale signed a letter opposing restrictions on local zoning contained in the bill.

The long and winding road to passing a drilling impact fee in Pennsylvania hit another pothole Wednesday when nine Republican state senators whose districts are outside the Marcellus shale signed a letter opposing restrictions on local zoning contained in the bill.

With Pennsylvania’s 2010 legislative session winding down, Gov. Ed Rendell on Friday asked leaders of the General Assembly to gather with him and energy industry leaders in Harrisburg Monday to work on a severance tax on gas produced from the state’s portion of the prolific Marcellus Shale play.

After winding lower from the mid-$3.80s in early Thursday trading, the November natural gas futures contract took an even deeper plunge following news from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) that 85 Bcf was injected into underground storage for the week ending Oct. 1. In the minutes before the regular trading session closed, the prompt-month contract tested the $3.610 low for the year recorded on Aug. 27.

Winding down the final days of the October 2007 contract’s trading, natural gas futures traders were hesitant to pick a direction on Tuesday. With storm concerns in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) and the Atlantic, natural gas futures held on to most of Monday’s gains to close a penny lower at $6.360, despite watching crude futures drop $1.42 to $79.53/bbl.

Duke Energy has successfully moderated its risk by winding down its merchant generation and trading activities, Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services said Wednesday in affirming the company’s corporate credit and issue ratings (‘BBB/A-2’) and those of its direct and indirect subsidiaries Duke Capital LLC, Texas Eastern Transmission L.P., PanEnergy Corp., Westcoast Energy Inc., and Union Gas Ltd. At the same time, the ratings agency revised the company’s outlook to positive from stable.

Key legislative provisions favorable to natural gas production are winding up on the cutting-room floor as House-Senate negotiations over a broad energy bill come down to the wire.

For industry sources hoping for a winding down, if not conclusion, of California’s ongoing energy investigations, a state lawmaker told an industry meeting in San Francisco last Thursday that the beat will go on and on, but how soon any conclusions are drawn is anyone’s guess.