Amid a swirl of pre-AGA storage speculation, the futures marketcontinued lower Wednesday, touching its lowest level so far thismonth. After a lower opening, the July contract quickly mapped outits high trade of the day at $2.36, before slipping 4 cents tofinish at $2.327. Estimated volume of 65,584 injected some lifeinto the market, following sub-45,000 trading sessions Monday andTuesday.

Record setting temperatures in many East Coast cities last weekmade the usual Wednesday exercise of predicting the weekly AmericanGas Association Storage report a little more dicey this week.Preliminary estimates ranged from as little as 65 Bcf to as much as110 Bcf. So it was a surprise to most when the AGA said that 63 Bcfwas injected into underground storage facilities last week. Andbecause this year’s injection figure neatly fell 41 Bcf short oflast year’s 104 Bcf refill, it exactly erased to zero theoften-quoted year-on-year surplus which has hung over the marketall year.

However, one Midcontinent trader was unimpressed by thesmallness of the report. “The market zone has been most activelyinjecting gas into storage the entire spring. Looks like they justtook the week off.” He added that storage injectors are notsweating the fact that refills are not keeping pace with last year.”They are starting to come to the realization that the longer theywait, the cheaper gas will become.”

For now, that realization may have to wait because the marketwas quick to react to the bullish news in last night’s Accesssession by jumping 2.8 cents higher to $2.355.

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