RE: Nat Gas prices. So what about new discoveries? given North American prices there is going to be NO reason to develop these fields until prices make it profitable, no one is going to lend and waste money doing that, especially after the current price disaster from many companies already heavily in debt - that "scar tissue" is going to make it difficult to develop anything until companies feel VERY confident in the price/profitability equation. The Apache field is likely going to be used and targeted for export when the Kitimat facilities come on line. Tell me how much it is going to cost to produce this gas (is it shallow/deep/remote location?) and at what price it's profitable and worth the huge financial investment to develop. Companies are simply not going to spend hundreds of millions or billions developing anything now when cap budgets are shrinking massively and there is already plenty of gas available to drill for but NOT at current prices.
In addition I have not even yet mentioned the recessionary intl environment and European disaster. Once again this is another factor against any company spending/raising lots of dollars to develop a commodity like nat gas when supply is plentiful. Many companies in the last 12-18 months were forced to drill because if they did not they would lose leases - that cost them and helped put us in this situation. Well that is basically done and as I have said before the production dropoff later this year and next is going to be a lot more than most think and drilling is going to come back very slowly and this industry is very now extremely gun shy.
MK