Canadian Natural Gas Gains as Storm Threatens U.S. Production
Canadian natural gas rose for a second day amid speculation a storm in Mexico’s Bay of Campeche could threaten supplies from the U.S. Gulf of Mexico.
Tropical Storm Nate is almost stationary over the bay with maximum sustained winds of about 60 miles (97 kilometers) an hour, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said in a report at 2 p.m. New York time. Reconnaissance aircraft will visit Nate today to try to determine what path the storm will take.
“Nobody’s really sure what’s going to happen with Nate,” said Martin King, senior commodities analyst at FirstEnergy Capital Corp. in Calgary. “People are treading very carefully.”
Alberta gas for October delivery rose 6.25 cents, or 1.8 percent, to C$3.50 per gigajoule ($3.54 per million British thermal units) as of 3:30 p.m. New York time, according to NGX, a Canadian Internet market. Gas traded on the exchange is shipped to users in Canada and the U.S., and is priced on TransCanada Corp.’s Alberta system.
Gas for October delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange rose 4 cents, or 1 percent, to settle at $3.98 per million Btu.
U.S. stockpiles of the fuel in underground storage rose 64 billion cubic feet, or 2.2 percent, to 3.025 trillion cubic feet last week, the Energy Department said today. The increase matched the average analyst estimate in a Bloomberg survey.
Spot Prices
Gas at the Alliance Pipeline delivery point near Chicago rose 4.28 cents, or 1.1 percent, to $4.037 per million British thermal units on the Intercontinental Exchange. Alliance is an express line that can carry about 1.5 billion cubic feet a day to the Midwest from western Canada.
At the Kingsgate point on the border of Idaho and British Columbia, gas was up 7.83 cents, or 2.1 percent, to $3.8673, according to ICE. At Malin, Oregon, where Canadian gas is traded for California markets, gas gained 6.61 cents, or 1.7 percent, to $3.9151.
Volume on TransCanada’s Alberta system, which collects the output of most of the nation’s gas wells, was 15.4 billion cubic feet, 323 million below target.
Gas was flowing at a daily rate of 2.65 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 1.77 billion cubic feet.
Available capacity on TransCanada’s British Columbia system at Kingsgate was 1.35 billion cubic feet. The system was forecast to carry 1.41 billion cubic feet today, about 51 percent of its capacity of 2.76 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 2.9 billion cubic feet at 2:05 p.m.
To contact the reporter on this story: Gene Laverty in Calgary at glaverty@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dan Stets at dstets@bloomberg.net
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