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The announced resignation of Interior Secretary Gale Norton has given opponents of drilling off Florida’s coastline added impetus to stop the Bush administration’s proposal to open up more of the eastern Gulf of Mexico to oil and natural gas leasing, said offshore drilling foe Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) on Monday.

Cash prices staged a solid rally Monday, jumping 10-75 cents in response to the return of colder weather in major midwestern, Midcontinent and northeastern markets and to a spike in futures prices.

Minerals Management Service Director Johnnie Burton will be in New Orleans on March 15 to host the Central Gulf of Mexico Lease Sale 198.Burton will open the sale at 9 a.m. (CST) in the Napoleon Ballroom with brief remarks.Immediately following the bid reading, she will hold a media availability to discuss the results of the sale. Lease Sale 198 encompasses 4,040 unleased blocks covering approximately 21.3 million acres in the Central GOM Outer Continental Shelf Planning Area offshore Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. The blocks are located from three to more than 210 miles offshore, in water depths of four to more than 3,400 meters. MMS estimates the lease sale could result in the production of 276 to 654 million barrels of oil and 1.59 to 3.30 Tcf of natural gas. The lease sale will be broadcast at www.oosa.com.

With the near-term weather outlook pumping some life into the bulls’ case in Sunday’s overnight Access session and again on Monday morning, April natural gas futures on Monday ended up recording a high of $7.090 before settling at $7.007, up 36.1 cents on the day. The day’s close marked the first time since Feb. 24 that a prompt-month settled north of $7.

The recent storage- and weather-driven downturn in natural gas prices has given investors pause, but producers remain undaunted, according to Raymond James & Associates Inc.

Despite the dramatic destruction and disruptions caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita last year, energy companies overall have weathered the storms from a credit standpoint, according to a report by Standard & Poor’s Ratings Service (S&).

With the exception of 2002, U.S. gas demand has been flat over the last five years because of limited supply growth, but going forward demand growth will be limited not only by supply but also by conservation in the residential and commercial sectors, demand destruction in the industrial sector and fuel switching in the electric sector, all because of high prices, consulting firm Energy Ventures Analysis (EVA) said in its latest Fuelcast outlook.

San Diego-based Sempra Energy’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) unit announced Monday it will hold an open season for nonbinding bids for capacity in what could be up to a 1.5 Bcf/d expansion of the company’s Energia Costa Azul LNG receiving terminal now under construction.

As the battle for energy trading supremacy continues to heat up, both Nymex Holdings Inc., the holding company of the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex), and Atlanta, GA-based IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) both reported strong earnings increases over 2004. The head-to-head competition for energy trading market share has increased over the past year (see Daily GPI, Feb. 16).