Natural Gas News – December 14, 2018

Closing Coal Plants Unlikely To Affect Natural Gas Prices, Expert Says

WBAA reported: As coal plants close around the country, the demand for natural gas is going up. But an expert says it likely won’t have a big effect on Hoosier’s heating bills in the long run. Doug Gotham is the director of the State Utility Forecasting Group at Purdue University. He says there are a number of reasons why natural gas prices are up right now. The weather has been colder. Oil prices are down, which means companies have less of an incentive to drill for both oil and gas. And U.S. markets put less natural gas into storage. But Gotham says little of it has to do with coal plants closing. “In the long term you’ll see some gradual increases in natural gas prices, but the natural gas supply system has changed dramatically in the last 10 years,” he says. For more on this story visit wbaa.org or click https://bit.ly/2BtAJar

Bulgaria Plans First Steps Towards Natural Gas Trading Bourse

Reuters reports: Bulgaria plans to set up a state-owned company by the end of the year to operate a natural gas bourse, with liquidity secured through an agreement with Austria’s natural gas trading hub, its energy minister said on Friday. Temenuzhka Petkova said Sofia will sign a memorandum for cooperation with the Vienna-based Central European Gas Hub (CEGH) next week as it pushes forward with plans for a gas trading hub in the Black Sea city of Varna. CEGH is a trading platform for the central European Baumgarten hub, the arrival point for Russian gas flowing into Europe via Ukraine and through the Nord Stream pipeline across the Baltic Sea. The new company will be a unit of state-owned gas network operator Bulgartransgaz, Petkova told parliament. Lawmakers voted on Nov. 30 that the operator should take steps to set up a gas trading bourse. For more on this story visit reuters.com or click https://bit.ly/2CeGkmp