Incremental prices for the last day of March, finding little tono support from any direction, did the natural thing: they fell byanywhere from about a nickel to more than a dime. April bidweeknumbers also slid a bit further.

The swing declines were fairly well mixed throughout allmarkets. Despite some snowy weather already happening or predictedfor parts of the Rockies, pipes there saw approximately the sameranges of softening as everywhere else.

Noting that CNG and TCO have recently been priced not far belowNortheast citygates, a marketer said it’s not that the Appalachianpipes are so strong, but rather that the citygates have weakened somuch “from those super-high levels this past winter.”

Several sources commented on the relative height of both swingand April prices. One sounded somewhat contradictory in observing,”Prices are too strong, but there’s not a lot of market demand outthere.” Another, quoting the Houston Ship Channel for April at justunder $2.90, said there didn’t seem to be any supply issues becausehe was getting plenty of offers, “but still, $2.90 gas in April isstill awfully high.”

A producer figured it must be the push to refill storage that’skeeping prices so strong. “With any amount of hot summer, I can’tsee them falling much at all from where they are now,” he said.

A marketer said Transco Zone 6-NYC was trading for April at$3.10 Thursday while TCO was around $2.99. Both are down about anickel from earlier in the week, “falling with the screen,” shesaid. Another Northeast trader agreed that Zone 6-NYC had softenedto $3.10-11, saying that indicated the pool’s premium to theproduction area had compressed since Wednesday’s Nymex settlement.But Texas Eastern M-3, which typically trades a few cents underZone 6-NYC, has not compressed as much and thus is trading evenwith or above Zone 6, he added. “The reason for this is thedifferences in the rate structures of the two pipes. Anything lessthan 24 cents [above production area prices] for M-3 doesn’t coveryour variable cost of transport, never mind your demand charge.”

A California buyer who started the week making border purchasesaround $2.94 Monday saw them climb above $3 Tuesday and Wednesday,but said they were falling back into the high $2.90s Thursday.However, he doesn’t expect them to get back to the $2.94 areaagain, noting that Access futures activity Thursday afternoon wastrending higher.

One California source reported a border deal at the GPI indexminus 0.75, while another bought at GPI’s index plus 1.25. There’sno discrepancy there, said the trader getting index-minus. “It justdepends on where the market was at the time of the deal,” he said.

Judging mainly from the last-of-March weakness, a Texas tradersaid it looks like the early April aftermarket will be down fromindex levels for at least the first few days.

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