“It’s like prices are wandering aimlessly in the wilderness,”one trader remarked of Tuesday’s sharp reversal from the marketstrength that opened the week. All points were on the same downhillpage as declines ranged from about 15 cents to 90 cents but withmost of them clustered in the range of 30-50 cents.

California recorded the day’s largest drops even as the stateIndependent System Operator followed up a late Monday afternoonStage One Electrical Emergency with a fresh Stage One alert tobegin the day Tuesday. Border quotes averaged less than $10 for thefirst time since mid-November.

A Northeast trader said, “Those new forecasts for colder marketarea weather seem to have less credibility today [Tuesday] thanthey did Monday.” He and other sources concurred that any drop intemperatures before next week likely would be too minor to restorebullishness to the cash market.

However, a producer was among several traders looking for arebound next week. The producer said it could even happen as earlyas Thursday if this afternoon’s AGA report makes a big enoughsplash. Most people seem to expect a storage drawdown in thevicinity of 190 Bcf, he said, which would have working volumesaround 1.5 Tcf compared to 2.3 Tcf a year ago. “Any sizeable figureat all will still leave us at dangerously low levels” for this timeof year, he said, and that should worry every trader.

Although Panhandle Eastern numbers fell about 30 cents onaverage, a Midcontinent producer said his sales rose steadilythroughout the morning from slightly less than $9.50 to the mid$9.60s. “It’s too bad I ran out of gas at that point,” he said.

An outage of two of three compressor units at Alliance’sWindfall (AB) Station came too late Tuesday to have any marketimpact. Windfall is the pipeline’s first mainline stationdownstream of the production area terminus, said an official whoestimated 10-15% of FT throughput was being curtailed.

A couple of western traders reported that regional basis forFebruary is looking very weak.

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