OREANDA-NEWS. April 27, 2015. While Wednesday was supposedly natural gas day at IHS CERAWeek, oil topics still leaked into some of the discussions from executives and officials, such as during a discussion with Richard Kinder of Kinder Morgan.

On the other hand, some companies centered on other commodities (*cough cough coal*) are looking to gas as a way to round out their opportunities in a rapidly changing global energy landscape.

We tweeted tidbits from @PlattsGas, as well as from @PlattsOil and @PlattsCoal today, and also shared stories from our three natural gas and LNG editors who were in attendance at various sessions. Below are some of their thoughts about Wednesday’s events.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission recently did something that government agencies rarely do: it backed off a proposed rule regulation after getting an earful from the group the regulation would have affected the most.

Speaking on a panel, FERC Commissioner Colette Honorable said the commission abandoned its efforts to shift the start time of the natural gas day. The decision came after a year of listening to representatives of the natural gas industry who were universally opposed to the proposal.

Last March, FERC issued a notice of proposed rulemaking to move up the start of the gas day by five hours to prevent gas-supply problems during the morning electric ramp-up period.

The commission last week moved to drop the proposed change and instead resolved to work to solve natural gas/electric power coordination issues on a regional basis, Honorable said.

“If it’s not broken, we don’t need to fix it,” she said on the sidelines of the conference. — Jim Magill

The price of Mozambique LNG will fit well into European gas markets when Italian company Eni ships its first cargo in 2020, Claudio Descalzi, CEO of Eni, said.

Mozambique LNG will be priced right to fit European markets because the exploration and production costs are very low. US LNG prices would fit better into the Asian markets, he said, leaving Europe open to supply from Mozambique.

Eni will get its first gas from Mozambique from a floating liquefaction train in the Rovuma Basin, followed by two onshore trains later, he said, and added that Eni’s gas resources in Mozambique could fill all of Italy’s demand for 30 years. (More details in the story here.) — Michael Rieke

Major improvements by natural gas exploration -and-production companies have allowed them to continue to drill profitably in a period of depressed prices, adding to the glut of gas and putting further pressure on prices, said Kyle Mork, president of Energy Corporation of America.

“What’s happening is that we continue to get better and get more production per rig,” Mork said in reference to the seeming paradox of growing US natural gas production despite a record low level of gas-directed rigs.

“We’re the problem,” he said. “Not only are we drilling longer wells, not only are we drilling them more cheaply, but we’re getting more recovery.”

Despite wide basis differentials at many Appalachian pricing points, the major improvements in efficiency, recent declines in service costs and continued technological improvements are allowing many Marcellus drillers, including ECA, to drill profitably even in the current pricing environment.

“Even with this ugly pricing, we can get on [our] best wells about a 20% rate of return,” Mork said. “So that is the problem is that there is still development going on even in an ugly pricing environment.” — Arjun Sreekumar