The market quieted down Friday as the weather-related excitementof last week receded. Eastern points, still just the teensiest bitnervous about the former Tropical Storm Helene and getting a bitchillier in northern market areas, ranged from flat to about anickel lower in most cases.

But except for Canadian trading points showing continuedstrength and Permian/Waha and Rockies numbers only moderatelysofter, the West was cratering again.

Helene was downgraded to a tropical depression after makinglandfall near Fort Walton Beach, FL, prompting the National WeatherService to cancel all tropical storm warnings. Crews were reportedreturning to evacuated eastern Gulf of Mexico platforms as Helene’santicipated east-northeast turn reduced its threat to heavy rainsover the Southeast. Meanwhile Tropical Storm Isaac, the latestdisturbance making the cross-Atlantic trek, was headingnorth-northwest about 1,915 miles east of the Lesser Antilles.Although NWS expected Isaac to attain hurricane status sometimeSaturday, it would not be until later this week it would approachthe Gulf — if at all.

A Northeast trader said the region would be cooler for theweekend, but any new heating load would be relatively negligible. Aproducer reported it was already colder Friday in the Midwest,which likely kept citygate declines there less than in theNortheast, but he agreed that the market could not look for muchmore weather support yet.

Niagara Mohawk Power’s Nine Mile Point 1 nuclear plant inScriba, NY, was scheduled to add to a fairily extensive list ofeastern nukes at either zero or partial operations over theweekend. The 609-MW plant was to be taken out of service Sunday forabout a week of planned maintenance.

Once again California prices were the day’s big losers astemperatures kept falling. A much more stringent high-linepack OFO byPG&E (see Transportation Notes)helped push all three points down even though SoCal Gas did not issuean OFO itself, sources said.

The lack of California demand carried over into large drops in SanJuan Basin and smaller ones on several Rockies pipes. A Northwestdecline of more than a nickel for domestic gas coupled with anickel-plus rise to widen the spread between the two points, which hadreached about 90 cents Thursday (see Daily GPI, Sept. 22) to slightly more than a dollarFriday.

An aggregator is seeing stronger October basis for theNortheast, quoting Transco Zone 6 (NYC) at plus 51, Zone 6(non-NYC) at plus 45, Texas Eastern M-3 at plus 44, CNG at plus 34,Columbia Gas at plus 26 and Algonquin citygate at plus 49. It was adifferent story for a Texas/Southwest trader, though, who saidbasis was weakening from September’s to minus 13-12.5 for Waha,minus 18.5-18 for El Paso-Permian and minus 1-0.5 for Houston ShipChannel.

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