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Canadian Natural Gas Falls as Gulf of Mexico Storm Threat Eases - Businessweek

Canadian natural gas fell for the first time in four days as crude oil stayed below $80 a barrel and Tropical Storm Debby moved away from production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.
July gas in Alberta declined 1.4 percent as oil slipped to $79.10 a barrel at 12:50 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Companies including BP Plc (BP/) and Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA) began returning workers to platforms after the storm weakened and moved toward Florida.
“I think it’s just the overall market and oil’s down,” Peter Linder, president of the DeltaOne Energy Fund in Calgary, said in a telephone interview. “We’re going to see a nice recovery in the next four or five days with serious heat coming to Chicago, the Midwest and New York.”
Alberta gas for July delivery decreased 2.75 cents to C$2.01 gigajoule ($1.85 per million British thermal units) as of 12:45 p.m. New York time on NGX, a Canadian Internet market. Gas traded on the exchange is shipped to users in Canada and the U.S. and priced on TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s Alberta system. NGX gas is down 22 percent this year from $2.58 Dec. 31.
Natural gas for July delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange rose 1.6 cents to $2.710 per million Btu at 12:52 p.m.
Florida Storm

Debby was 70 miles west of Cedar Key, Florida, moving east at 3 mph, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said in an advisory at 11 a.m. local time. Meteorologists say the storm will move across Florida starting tomorrow and into the open Atlantic. Forecasters revised Debby’s path away from the heart of the Gulf’s energy production area yesterday.
Cooling demand will be 46 percent above normal in the northern Midwest, Canada’s largest export market, through July 3, according to Weather Derivatives of Belton, Missouri.
“The Central U.S, is likely to see ongoing extreme temps,” and “the mid-Atlantic will remain plenty hot as well,” Travis Hartman, a meteorologist with MDA EarthSat Weather, wrote in a 6- to 10-day forecast today.
The high in Chicago on June 28 will be 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 Celsius), 12 above normal, according to AccuWeather Inc. in State College, Pennsylvania.
Flow Rates

Volume on TransCanada’s Alberta system, which collects the output of most of the nation’s gas wells, was 16.6 billion cubic feet at noon New York time.
Gas was flowing at a daily rate of 2.12 billion cubic feet at Empress, Alberta, where the fuel is transferred to TransCanada’s main line.
At McNeil, Saskatchewan, where gas is transferred to the Northern Border Pipeline for shipment to the Chicago area, the daily flow rate was 1.91 billion cubic feet.
The available capacity on TransCanada’s British Columbia system at Kingsgate was 958 million cubic feet. The system was forecast to carry 1.66 billion cubic feet today, or 63 percent of normal capacity of 2.62 billion.
The volume on Spectra Energy’s British Columbia system, which gathers the fuel in northeastern British Columbia for delivery to Vancouver and the Pacific Northwest, totaled 2.88 billion cubic feet at 11:50 a.m.
To contact the reporter on this story: Colin McClelland in Toronto at [email protected]
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dan Stets at [email protected]