The April aftermarket got off to a weak start Friday as quotesfor gas flows Sunday and today were below both first-of-monthindexes and end-of-March levels in virtually all cases. The biggestdropoffs occurred in California, where temperatures were much moresummer-like than elsewhere. However, the Golden State stillretained the dubious distinction of having the most expensive gasby far.

Thursday’s futures softness and a continuing retreat from coldweather earlier in the week in eastern markets were the chiefreasons for April cash starting out lower, sources said. There’s agood chance for further downturns this week, they said, pointing toa Friday screen that was up about a nickel during the morning butplunged to more than 20 cents lower that afternoon.

Saturday-only swing quotes were relatively rare since mosttraders had closed out their March positions with two-day deals onThursday. However, the March 31 numbers were generally strongerthan their early April counterparts, with most points flat tomildly higher and only a scattered few registering declines ofslightly more than a nickel.

“This weird division of flow periods” was causing schedulinghassles for at least one Rockies marketer. Things were furthercomplicated by maintenance starting today at Clay Basin storage,which means no injections or withdrawals until late this week, shesaid. That’s likely to strand a significant amount of Rockies gasand cause softness there to continue for a while longer, themarketer said.

One good measure of how much the market has consolidated fromthe heady sky-high pricing around the end of 2000 and in early 2001is that prices began to show up last week with the numeral “3” inthe dollar place. San Juan Basin got as low as $3.85 for lastTuesday’s gas day, but that appeared to be an isolated phenomenonsince both the Bondad and Blanco pools still averaged well over $4.But on Friday San Juan and Rockies points registered quite a fewsub-$4 quotes, and the Rockies in general averaged below $4. Untillast week, not since early November 2000 had Daily GPI recorded anyspot prices below $4.00 (again, Rockies/San Juan numbers). Prior tothat, one has to go back to early November to find sub-$4 prices.

A producer predicted this week’s AGA report will be considerablymore bullish than the last one because of the cold weather thatprevailed in much of the East for several days last week. “But it’slikely that two weeks from now every region will be reporting netinjections,” he added.

“It’s really warm here today [Friday], nearly 85 degrees,” saida California source. PG&E citygates started out well above $9because the utility didn’t post projections of high Sunday-Mondaylinepack until after most cash trading had finished. But quotesfell as low as $8 late as traders became aware they might have tocope with issuance of a high-inventory OFO by PG&E over theweekend. Such an event tends to pose the biggest problem forend-users, though, and isn’t so bad for others, the source said.

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