After a brief fling with index levels or higher at midweek, itwas back to sub-index territory Friday as the cash market, againcued by the futures screen in the absence of fundamentals, sawgeneral drops between a nickel and more than 15 cents. Mostdeclines were on either side of a dime. Despite the sizeableweekend pricing losses, nearly all points finished the week abouteven with the previous Friday’s numbers or slightly higher.

Just about all Texas markets have gone back to about a dimeunder index, according to a Houston-based source. He said he spentmuch of last week “tweaking” industrial markets for both overpullsand underpulls. He reported getting fewer and fewer gas orders fromthe state’s electric utilities as the week went on. And unlike lastmonth, “I don’t have any storage plays going on now,” the sourceadded.

San Juan Basin quotes, which had ridden high for much of theweek based on processing plant and other outages, suffered Friday’sbiggest loss of 15 cents after most if not all of the constraintshad ended. It also had by far the largest price range of about aquarter. Although the Blanco pool traded for most of the morning inthe mid $1.80s, a marketer said, there was a late rebound to themid to high $1.90s. He thought some traders had sold early withouthaving the gas in their possession yet, expecting a continuedfree-fall in pricing. “Then they had to cover their shorts [shortsupply positions] and couldn’t go to the Permian [Basin]” whereprices were considerably higher around $2.06-07.

A NOVA imbalance tolerance change prompted by high linepack putdownward pressure on intra-Alberta prices, according to a marketerwhose high C$2.50s quotes fell by just over C10 cents.

Other than the big price downticks, the weekend market waspretty featureless, a Northeast trader said. Barring any unexpectedmarket influences, he looks for low volatility to dominate throughthe middle of this week as much of the trading community attendsthe GasMart/Power ’99 trade fair in Dallas.

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