Wisdom

Canadian natural gas exports continue to defy conventional wisdom by growing instead of living up to consensus forecasts of production tapering off in aging fields, trade records kept by the U.S. Department of Energy show.

There is a growing number of contenders trying to disprove conventional wisdom that growth of global traffic in liquefied natural gas (LNG) will largely pass by Canada. Project Rabaska in Quebec is the latest entry (see related story) and follows Irving Oil’s proposal to add LNG to its oil port at the New Brunswick capital of St. John and Access Northeast Energy’s (now Anadarko, see related story) Bear Head project for northern Nova Scotia.

There is a growing number of contenders trying to disprove conventional wisdom that growth of global traffic in liquefied natural gas (LNG) will largely pass by Canada. Project Rabaska in Quebec is the latest entry (see Daily GPI, Aug. 10) and follows Irving Oil’s proposal to add LNG to its oil port at the New Brunswick capital of St. John and Access Northeast Energy’s (now Anadarko, see related story) Bear Head project for northern Nova Scotia.

Describing operations in picked-over natural gas fields at home as a case of “managing decline,” Canada’s seventh-ranked producer has set out to expand in international liquefied natural gas development in order to maintain and increase sales to the United States.

While many other energy companies are preaching the wisdom of traditional regulated utility businesses and shedding non-core assets, DTE Energy has its eye on expanding several nonregulated operations that could help make up 40% of company earnings in the near future.

Despite the conventional wisdom that there has been a decouplingof natural gas and crude oil prices, ICF Consulting says it isprimarily the close tie between the two commodities under thecurrent circumstances that has been responsible for high naturalgas prices this year.

Despite the conventional wisdom that there has been a decouplingof natural gas and crude oil prices, ICF Consulting says it isprimarily the close tie between the two commodities under thecurrent circumstances that has been responsible for high naturalgas prices this year.

Defying the conventional wisdom that lower gas demand over aweekend usually causes softer prices, cash prices put on a show ofstrength Friday with nearly all points rising by a nickel or more.An increase of less than a penny in the Henry Hub futures contractprovided little support for the cash market, so sources concludedit must have been the residual effect from Thursday’s screen run-upof nearly a dime that helped push up cash quotes Friday.

A Houston marketer invoked the wisdom of baseball great YogiBerra to describe Tuesday’s cash market: “It’s deja vu all overagain.” In other words, it was like most of February’s previoustrading activity-generally flat with tight ranges. However, thoughthere was little if any change at any point, whatever changes didoccur were slightly to the downside. They were limited to 1-3 centsin all cases.