Daily GPI

Offshore Nova Scotia is on the precipice of becoming a vital natural gas producing basin in North America, and will play a “dominant role” in supplying the U.S. Northeast, the Maritimes and possibly central Canada, according to a new report by the Ziff Energy Group.

Florida Gas Transmission ended Thursday an Overage Alert Day notice for its market area that had been in effect since July 27.

A day after confirming that a lateral leak near Matagorda Offshore Pipeline System (MOPS) Platform 703 had been repaired and an outage of the Matagorda 703/704/709 receipt point had ended last Saturday (see Daily GPI, Aug. 7), MOPS operator Northern Natural Gas reported Wednesday that a leak had been detected again on the lateral. Matagorda 703/704/709 was taken to zero flow again, affecting 22,000 MMBtu/d. The expected downtime is unknown, NNG said. NNG owner Dynegy did not respond to an inquiry about whether this was a new leak or a recurrence of the old one.

With milder weather reaching as far as the Southeast and energy futures back on a downward slope, it was virtually inevitable that cash prices continued to slide Wednesday at nearly all points. Besides the above factors, sources said the soft market also was reflecting what some believe will be a relatively big storage injection report Thursday morning for a period covering record-setting heat and electricity demand.

Cool breezy weather across much of the nation, new predictions of a weak hurricane season and expectations of another relatively large storage injection despite last week’s record heat were some of the major fundamental factors that helped the bears pressure the September gas futures contract down 5.6 cents Wednesday to $2.660.

Following the lead of other multi-faceted energy marketers forced to sell income-producing assets to build cash, CMS Energy Corp. is negotiating the possible sale of its entire domestic pipeline and field services businesses, worth a combined net value of $1.4 billion. Assets on the table include the Panhandle Eastern and Trunkline interstate natural gas pipelines, the Lake Charles, LA, liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving terminal, CMS Field Services’ gas gathering and processing assets, and its one-third ownership interest in Guardian Pipeline.

Williams Cos. employees used to “living on Tulsa time” may have to reset their watches in the next few weeks, after an internal company memo announced that the Oklahoma-based company will slash its workforce payroll up to one-third, slicing about 4,000 positions through asset sales, retirement and layoffs. Most of the affected employees will no longer be Williams employees when the asset sales are completed, but the cuts will be deeply felt in the already wounded energy trading unit in Tulsa, where at least 100 will get a final paycheck in the next few days, and up to 330 in the next two months. London is expected to trim up to 70 European traders, while Houston could lose up to 25.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has approved a stipulation and consent agreement ordering National Fuel Gas Supply Corp. to pay refunds to its firm storage and transportation customers who subscribed to service during a period in which the company illegally operated a storage well without the prior consent of the agency.

Columbia Gas Transmission, a unit of NiSource Inc., said a 30-inch diameter looping line carrying about 60 MMcf/d of gas in West Virginia ruptured Monday at 11 p.m., causing a fire but no injuries.