Daily GPI

Amid concerns about the potential track of Hurricane Keith and with help from strong natural gas, crude oil and heating oil futures, cash prices emerged from a generally softer weekend to register widely varying gains at nearly all points Monday.

Fueled by hurricane concerns, natural gas futures picked up Monday where they left off Friday as traders continued to hedge against possible supply disruptions in a market already in a delicate supply-demand balance.

Gulf Canada Resources is expecting to more than double its daily gas production by swallowing rival Crestar Energy in a C$1.7-billion ($1.1-billion) friendly cash and stock transaction, excluding C$565 million in debt assumption. The combination will form a top-five Canadian independent production company with plenty of room to grow.

NorthWestern Corp., a $5 billion diversified services and solutions company based in Sioux Falls, SD, announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire The Montana Power Co.’s energy distribution and transmission business for approximately $1.1 billion in cash, including approximately $488 million in existing Montana Power debt.

For Anadarko, growing in leaps and bounds before it joined forces with United Pacific Resources, a merger just made sense. For EOG Resources, which at one time had been part of mega-marketer Enron, smaller is better, and a merger would not make sense. There is no denying, however, that the disparate strategies have worked for both.

By springtime, the little old ladies and a few congressmen who have been fighting northeastern pipeline construction tooth and nail for the past few years may be screaming “where’s the gas” if prices spike to the levels expected.

Building on a tripling of the financial contribution of its Dynegy Marketing and Trade division, Dynegy Inc. announced its third-quarter recurring earnings per share of $0.55 will top analysts’ estimates of $0.50 per share.

After putting its 50% interest of the Express System crude oil pipeline on the market last December as part of CEO Doug Baldwin’s $3 billion divestiture program, TransCanada PipeLines Ltd. (TCPL) finally found a buyer in Alberta Energy Company Ltd. (AEC) for a net total of $60 million. Included in the sale is TransCanada’s 50% interest in Marquest marketing entities which act as shippers on the system.

Columbia Energy Group has entered into an agreement with Orion Power Holdings of Baltimore, MD, to sell all of the outstanding shares of its subsidiary Columbia Electric Corp. for approximately $200 million in cash plus the assumption of project-related debt. Included in the deal is 4,000 MW of capacity in construction and development phases.