As a Daily GPI source had predicted Monday, that day’s futuresrun-up provided enough momentum to keep most cash market points onthe rise Tuesday. But don’t bet the farm on cash firmness tocontinue today, not after the screen’s headlong plunge Tuesday,several traders said. Despite heat waves remaining in the West andSouth, there is not enough in the way of fundamentals to counterthe screen’s negative influence, they said.

Most pipes ranged from flat to up about a nickel. Some of thelarger gains were in the West, such as San Juan Basin’s dime-plusjump to trade at near-parity with Permian gas. Both basins wereimpacted by outages (El Paso’s Keystone Station in the Permian,Williams Field Services’ Milagro Plant in the San Juan).

Malin, where PG&E Gas Transmission was projecting zeroavailable interruptible capacity, went up by eight cents. That waspartly a function of the pipeline’s Station 9 maintenancecurtailment through Friday (see Transportation Notes), a marketersaid. In addition, work by Alberta Natural Gasat its HawkinsCreek facility was constraining 200 MMcf/d at Kingsgate, anothersource said.

Despite NOVA’s delay in repairing its weekend rupture untilTuesday afternoon (see Transportation Notes), intra-Alberta quoteswere already starting to shed a lot of the increases that cameMonday while the outage was keeping 1 Bcf/d of production off-line.Prices fell almost C20 cents to the C$1.90 area, a Calgary traderreported.

One sign of impending softness today came from a producer whoreported doing a late Agua Dulce deal at $1.81 after hearing mid$1.80s numbers earlier. Another source said cash prices were slowto react to the plummeting screen, but were at their lowest levelslate in trading.

There was almost no basis differential across the state ofTexas, a marketer lamented. Surplus supplies and lack ofsignificant demand from Eastern markets are depressing prices inEast Texas, while maintenance constraints and strong buying fromboth pipelines and utilities were buoying numbers in the West Texasarea, he said.

The Rockies and associated markets are likely to be pretty quietfor the rest of the week as many traders attend the Colorado Oil& Gas Association meeting in Denver.

September prices are getting much weaker, said a marketer whowas seeing Malin falling by a dime and Rockies pipes down 7-8cents. Another trader was doing September intra-Alberta dealsaround C$1.60, almost C40 cents under the August index.

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