Canadian Natural Gas Tumbles Amid Ample Supplies, Mild Weather
Dec. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Canadian natural-gas prices fell for a fifth day amid mild weather and higher-than-normal inventories of the heating fuel.
Temperatures in the U.S. Midwest, the biggest market for Canada's gas exports, will be as much as 8 degrees Fahrenheit (4 Celsius) above normal through Dec. 7, Earth Satellite Corp. said. U.S. gas supplies stood at 3.299 trillion cubic feet last week, 11 percent more than the five-year average for the period, the Energy Department said yesterday.
``All through November, storage hasn't changed much and that's certainly price-depressing,'' said Martin King, an analyst with FirstEnergy Capital Corp., a Calgary-based securities firm.
Gas for delivery Dec. 6 at EnCana Corp.'s AECO C hub in Alberta, the nation's largest trading point, dropped 4 cents to C$6.24 per gigajoule ($5.52 per million British thermal units) according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Prices at Dawn, Ontario, plunged 69 cents, or 8.8 percent, to C$7.12 per gigajoule. Duke Energy Corp.'s Dawn storage facility connects pipelines that run to central Canada and the U.S. Midwest and Northeast.
Spot gas tumbled 59 cents, or 7.6 percent, to C$7.19 per gigajoule at Toronto and 83 cents, or 10 percent, to C$7.12 at Niagara, Ontario.
Gas fell 62 cents, or 8.4 percent, to C$6.78 per gigajoule at Sumas, Washington, where the fuel is exported to the Pacific Northwest, and 35 cents to C$6.72 at Kingsgate, British Columbia, where gas is shipped to California.
January gas at AECO rose 3 cents to C$6.63 per gigajoule. The January-to-October contract at AECO slipped 5 cents to C$6.30 per gigajoule.
Futures, Pipelines
January gas fell 1.5 cents at $6.796 per million Btu on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Volume on TransCanada Corp.'s Alberta system, which gathers most of the gas produced in Canada, was 14 billion cubic feet at 12 p.m. Calgary time. TransCanada forecast 1.82 billion cubic feet of gas would be withdrawn from Alberta storage today.
Gas was flowing at a daily rate of 5.2 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 flow rate was 2.1 billion cubic feet.
Available capacity on TransCanada's British Columbia system, which carries gas to the U.S. border at Eastport, Idaho, was 56 million cubic feet. The system was forecast to carry 2.95 billion cubic feet today, about 98 percent of capacity.
The volume on Duke's British Columbia system, which gathers the fuel in northeastern British Columbia for delivery to Vancouver and the Pacific Northwest, totaled 2.8 billion cubic feet at 11:26 a.m. Seattle time.
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