Swing quotes for the first five days of July saw little changefrom end-of-June numbers in most cases and were stronger at somepoints. However, the July aftermarket did begin at levels downconsiderably from indexes.

Activity was reported to be noticeably subdued, largely due tothe general rush of traders to finish early and leave the officefor the long Independence Day holiday weekend. Also, some Canadiansources were taking Friday off in observance of Saturday’s CanadaDay holiday, and weather conditions were expected to remain mild inmost markets until a warming period begins this week.

Sumas prices got some support from the annual turnaroundmaintenance that was scheduled to start yesterday at the FortNelson Plant, sources said. That will take a little more than 600MMcf/d off the market for about two weeks, according to one, so itwas reasonable to expect that Sumas traders would be stocking up onstorage gas over the weekend that they can withdraw to tide themover during the Fort Nelson outage. (He went on to note that whilethe McMahon Plant used to be the biggest processing facility on theWestcoast system, an influx of new production from the NorthwestTerritories had elevated Fort Nelson to the top position.)

Meanwhile, though, Westcoast had more gas in its system than itwanted and had a pack tolerance of zero and a draft tolerance of20% in effect going into the weekend.

Southern California border prices started the day much lower inthe $4.50s because people were afraid they might have to contendwith a weekend OFO from SoCal Gas, a marketer said, but then soaredas high as the $4.90 area after it became apparent there would beno OFO. However, traders still had to be wary of potential OFOs forSunday or later, he added.

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