Word

Friday afternoon Enterprise Products Partners LP was awaiting word from federal authorities on whether it could flow gas on a bypass of a Gulf of Mexico (GOM) platform that was damaged when a piece of equipment exploded and caused a fire late Tuesday.

As the nation gears up for new leadership in Washington, natural gas and electricity companies find themselves in kind of a regulatory limbo as they await word on who will chair FERC in the Obama administration.

As the nation gears up for new leadership in Washington, natural gas and electricity companies find themselves in kind of a regulatory limbo as they await word on who will be FERC chairman in the Obama administration.

Holding to their word to rebuff an energy package offered up by Senate Republicans earlier this month, Senate Democrats last week rolled out energy legislation that would revoke $17 million in tax breaks for energy companies, impose a windfall profits tax on energy companies that don’t invest in renewable energy sources and impose federal penalties for energy price gouging. The legislation proposal drew immediate criticism from industry-related business groups, including IntercontinentalExchange (ICE), the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex) and the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM).

Holding to their word to rebuff an energy package offered up by Senate Republicans last week, Senate Democrats Wednesday rolled out energy legislation that would revoke $17 million in tax breaks for energy companies, impose a windfall profits tax on energy companies that don’t invest in renewable energy sources and impose federal penalties for energy price gouging. The legislation proposal drew immediate criticism from the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex) and the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM).

Making good on its word to move Rocky Mountain natural gas west, El Paso Corp. filed a right-of-way application with the Bureau of Land Management last week for the Ruby Pipeline project, a 680-mile, 42-inch diameter pipeline that would begin at the Opal Hub in Wyoming and terminate at the Malin, OR, interconnect near California’s northern border. An open season is scheduled to be launched within three months, El Paso said.

Making good on its word to move Rocky Mountain natural gas west, El Paso Corp. filed a right-of-way application with the Bureau of Land Management for the Ruby Pipeline project, a 680-mile, 42-inch diameter pipeline that would begin at the Opal Hub in Wyoming and terminate at the Malin, OR, interconnect near California’s northern border. An open season is slated to be launched within three months, El Paso said.

Despite word that a possible tropical storm could be swirling in the Gulf of Mexico as early as Thursday, natural gas futures traders put downward pressure on the October contract in Wednesday’s trade. The prompt month recorded a low of $6.160 before closing out at $6.180, down 38.8 cents from Tuesday’s close.

Despite word that the fourth tropical depression of the Atlantic hurricane season had formed in the far eastern Atlantic, the natural gas futures rally of last week ran out of steam on Monday after encountering resistance just north of $7. The September contract recorded a high on the day of $7.120 before settling at $6.794, down 2.6 cents from Friday’s close.