Nearly every trading point continued to build Wednesday on theslight degree of bullishness established on Tuesday. The majorityof increases were moderate, within the range of 2-4 cents. Therewas “just a little more heat” to raise cooling load a notch higher,said a Midcontinent source, and the futures screen literally put inits 2 cents worth with a rise of a little over that amount.

The weakest market was in the Rockies, where several pipes wereflat to a penny or two lower. One marketer said he did his firstdeals into Kern River at Opal for just over $2, “and no more thanfive minutes later a big seller emerged to push prices down.” Hereported three subsequent Kern River-Opal purchases at $1.96-98.The Rockies in general was coming off as trading progressed, hesaid.

The tendency was in the opposite direction for a Northeastutility buyer. It seems some degree of supply tightness hasoccurred late in almost every daily trading session recently, hesaid. His early Texas Eastern M-3 and Transco Zone 6-NYC purchasesaround $2.40 were followed by others at $2.44-45.

The Waha/Katy spread got about a penny wider than it was earlierthis week, but at 4 cents it still was far from satisfactory to onemarketer. He was trading Waha at $2.17-18 and Katy at $2.21-22.

The AGA’s Wednesday afternoon report of 85 Bcf was on the lowside “but not by much,” according to a Midcontinent marketer. “It[the report] was neutral as far as I’m concerned.”

Intra-Alberta pricing barely seemed to notice that as much as800-900 MMcf/d was coming back into the market now that NOVA hasfinished its maintenance curtailment on the Western AlbertaExtension. A trader quoting intra-Alberta at C$2.73-74 Wednesday,barely a penny or two down, thought a lot of the returning gas wasbeing absorbed by storage injections.

Convergence was working pretty well for the above intra-Albertatrader. He reported doing both July and July-October baseload dealsin the mid C$2.70s. But most people are still “real skittish” aboutdoing any July deals prior to the Nymex settlement, reported aNortheast source who was getting Transco Zone 6-NYC basis offers ofplus 19-19.5. A marketer said most of the Midcontinent talk he washearing continues to center around index-flat deals.

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