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El Paso Corp.’s Southern LNG Inc. has announced an open season to expand its soon-to-reopen Elba Island liquefied natural gas receiving terminal near Savannah, GA by approximately 80%. Southern LNG wants to offer an additional 3.3 Bcf of storage capacity with a send-out rate of 360 MMcf/d, with a planned in-service date of 2005. The Elba Island facility, which has been inactive since 1982, is scheduled to begin receiving shipments this month, and its expansion plans follow on the heels of two other domestic LNG expansions already in the works.

Congressional passage of President Bush’s energy initiatives, as well as expanded free trade authority, will have a “great bearing” on the nation’s economy this year and beyond, Vice President Dick Cheney said in a speech Monday to the Southern Governors’ Association (SGA).

Western Canada’s natural gas production will continue to be the key to the country’s gas supply, while Canada’s frontier regions will supplement the volumes available from the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin, according to the authors of a comprehensive four-year study. However, future supplies will cost more to find and produce because the average size of new gas pools, mostly in western Canada, is shrinking.

With the stimulus of the state’s electricity and natural gas crunch lingering, the pace of new natural gas well drilling in the northern half of California has nearly doubled over last year, according to state officials. Notices to drill new gas wells are coming in at a pace not seen since the mid-1980s, and the total for any single year in the 1990s will soon be surpassed.

Florida Gas Transmission issued an Overage Alert Day notice with 10% tolerance for negative daily imbalances Tuesday. “Please be advised that FGT’s capacity is being fully utilized and with current events considered, there are reports that gas trading activities may be difficult,” the pipeline said in its bulletin board posting.

The cash market came to a near-standstill at mid-morning Tuesday as a result of the terrorist attacks on New York City’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon and other sites (see related story). Virtually all trading operations sent employees home early, while pipelines and utilities kept only those personnel essential for critical operations on duty.

In response to the crisis taking place just a few hundred yards away at the World Trade Center and along with every other commodity exchange in the country, the New York Mercantile Exchange indefinitely suspended natural gas futures trading yesterday morning before the opening of the regular open-outcry session at 9:30 (EST). At that time, October futures were called to open just about unchanged from Monday’s $2.392 close. As of press time last night, Nymex had still not made an official announcement as to when it might reopen for trading. However, all three major stock exchanges will be closed today prompting some to suggest Nymex will follow suit.

With a top-notch team in place to find and produce natural gas and an intense determination to pursue and create value for shareholders, Canadian Hunter CEO Steve Savidant said Thursday that his company may go after some of the “significant and substantial opportunities” he expects to see in the next few months. With almost no debt currently, Savidant said, “we intend to keep the powder dry,” but “there are acquisitions on the radar.”

The cash market was up to its old tricks again Monday, ignoring a general lack of hot-weather support and a significantly weaker screen to post moderate gains. Most of the upticks were a dime or less. Rockies points, which had seen the largest declines going into the weekend, rebounded more strongly than others, but several Northeast citygates also saw dime-plus increases.