Thursday’s trading confirmed the signs from Wednesday that therecent bullishness in swing prices had reached a peak. Although afew points were flat to 2-3 cents higher Thursday, the majorityfell by several cents, with the greatest weakness occurring in theMidcontinent/Midwest and Southwest markets. Cash anticipated afutures downswing and beat the screen to the punch by starting tosoften earlier, a Midcontinent marketer said, although Nymextraders eventually wound up the day with a small gain.

Another marketer reported a notable pickup in intra-day tradinginterest among Northeast buyers, saying they needed the gas to copewith hot weather Thursday and today. Northeast citygates roseslightly, but he expects them to join overall softness today as theregional heat is expected to begin easing Saturday.

A downtown power outage in Chicago had no gas market impact, butone trader said it wasn’t surprising that Commonwealth Edison’ssystem was overloaded because of the way power generation has beendriving the Midwest market. Oklahoma intrastates Transok and Enogexwere commanding a premium over other Midcontinent pipes because ofelectric load, he said. It was near 110 degrees Wednesday inOklahoma and Thursday high temperatures were a “cool” 105 degrees,the trader noted.

With a two-day outage of El Paso’s Keystone Mainline Station andthe associated 400 MMcf/d curtailment ended, San Juan and Permianquotes took the biggest price hits of between a nickel and a dime.However, Waha numbers relied on continued heavy air conditioningload in Texas and the Midcontinent to avoid softening by more thana couple of pennies.

PG&E citygates were among the rare points registering asmall gain as the utility elected not to continue a high-inventoryOFO beyond Thursday.

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