Much like futures, swing price movement came to a nearstandstill Tuesday. Small declines of mostly less than 4 centstended to outweigh the few small scattered gains, but the overalleffect was pancake-like. Few areas were any more than moderatelychilly, and even the Upper Plains, where most Arctic cold frontsstart spreading into the U.S., was seeing temperatures in the 70s.Forecasters reported an absolutely featureless Atlantic stormoutlook.

Consumers Energy released extra storage capacity Tuesday andthat spawned increased buying pressure as people looked to tuckaway just a little more gas into the ground, a marketer said. Thathelped create a little extra demand at Canadian border points, headded.

Chicago prices roared up to $3.14 after starting at $3.10 butcame off a little at the end, according to one trader.

Relatively cool weather in the Southeast provided some pricesupport there, while a marketer said temperatures remained warmenough in Southern California that power generation demandcontinued to be felt.

Fixed-price activity for bidweek was still a slow starter, withsources saying they would wait to assess this afternoon’s futuressettlement and AGA storage report before committing. A marketercommented he didn’t like the “double whammy” of the storage figureand Nymex close coming in such close juxtaposition, saying thatmade it harder to plan strategy on taking long or short supplypositions. However, he was leaning toward the short side because”our weather consultants don’t see any major cold blasts comingduring November.”

Saying “welcome to winter,” a Northeast buyer reported gettingTransco Zone 6-NYC basis offers at plus 49, saying it wasconsiderably higher than recent months (GPI’s basis averages forthat point were plus 21 and plus 21.5 for the September and Octoberbidweeks respectively). With the screen around $3.01 Tuesday, thatwould represent a delivered price about $3.50, “which would haveus seriously considering a conversion to fuel oil.” However,another source said Zone 6-NYC basis wasn’t quite that strong,pegging it at plus 44.5-45.

A marketer said Southern California border basis had risen abouta penny since Monday to plus 8. Other basis quotes Tuesday includedChicago citygate at plus 16.25-75; Columbia Gulf-mainline at plus2.5; Tennessee Zone 0 at minus 8.5; Transco Station 45 at minus 1;TGT Zone SL at minus 1.25; Trunkline-East LA at minus 4; ElPaso-Permian at minus 14 (unchanged from Monday); and El Paso-SanJuan (Blanco) at minus 17.

As one might expect, winter term basis (November-March) forChicago is a little weaker than last year “but not by much,” amarketer said. The difference comes from Northern Border being ableto bring its full complement of gas to the Windy City from theget-go in 1999, whereas a year ago the Northern Border connection’sstart-up was delayed into December.

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