Traders finally got a chance to conduct business Monday for whatseemed like the first day in September with no tropical stormsimmediately threatening, disrupting or starting to move on afterhaving disrupted Gulf of Mexico production. “It was nice to have alittle window with nothing [storm-related] imminent,” one soucesaid. Cash prices reacted to what has been generally bearishfundamentals all along with declines of between a nickel and eitherside of a dime.

Any remaining production outages related to Tropical StormHermine were minor and fading Monday, Gulf pipelines said. AlthoughHermine finally achieved named storm status Saturday, it fizzledout rather quickly after going ashore in eastern Louisiana.

Although the above-mentioned trader was correct in saying noproduction threat was “imminent,” the 1998 hurricane seasoncontinued to roar along in September after a slow start thissummer. Hurricane Georges was hitting St. Thomas in the U.S. VirginIslands with 110-mph winds at midday Monday and appeared to belining up on Puerto Rico next. The big question for gas markets waswhether Georges would move up the East Coast or thread its wayamong the Caribbean islands into the Gulf. Georges is a muchstronger storm than anything the Gulf Coast has seen so far thisyear.

And don’t look now, but Ivan has already gotten a tropical stormname while still much closer to the coast of West Africa than toNorth America.

The uncertainty of Georges’ future gave the futures screen goodreason to bounce up and down, said a source who described it as”whipsaw city.” If his company gets into a position, “we eithertake our profits really quickly or take our losses and get out[quickly[ and start over,” he said.

Intra-Alberta was the only cash market not to register a lossMonday, actually gaining about a penny to either side of C$2.20.”They keep going on about not enough field receipts, but sometimeswe wonder,” a Calgary trader said. Another source said Mondayprobably was one of the least volatile days in intra-Alberta actionin the last three weeks.

A Gulf Coast source said the morning’s trading was “sparse forus as we were just getting world of gas coming back on-line forintraday flow.”

A Midcontinent marketer said prices there were down hard fromthe weekend at first, then picked up with a screen rise. He thoughtcash was relatively weak compared to futures, and that the screenwould have gone lower if there hadn’t been hurricane potentialstill lingering. For October, most Midcontinent pipes are being bida little under index, he said, while offers are at index-flat toplus 0.25.

Assuming Georges should head into the Gulf, some sources worriedthat it might disrupt the October bidweek as well as offshoreproduction. Georges could make this bidweek a non-event, aHouston-based producer said, because nobody will want to do anyfixed-price deals with a strong hurricane messing up things.

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