The cash market appears to have decided to take it easy at leasttemporarily. Tuesday’s activity remained relatively subdued, andfew points strayed much further than 2-3 cents to either side offlat.

Some larger gains in the Rockies/Pacific Northwest, in responseto high but not unduly severe western temperatures, tended tooutweigh declines of a nickel or more at Malin and the SouthernCalifornia border to give the overall market a slightly positivetenor.

Quotes for Sumas and domestic gas into Northwest, which werestill essentially at parity as recently as Monday, widened to aspread of almost a nickel Tuesday. The ongoing turnaround outage ofWestcoast’s Fort Nelson Plant, which is taking a little more than600 MMcf/d off the market until early next week, apparently ishaving more impact as time goes on, a marketer speculated. Andshippers must have been heeding Northwest’s warning about excessivelinepack in the south end of the system, another source said,because a bit of a short supply squeeze turned up at Opal in latetrading.

Western points showed little consistency in price trends.Traders reported softening numbers at Southern California Borderand Malin (although there was a bit of a “dead cat bounce near theend, according to one marketer), but late firmness at Opal and inSan Juan Basin. Meanwhile, Chicago citygates got up to $4.25 afterstarting the day about a dime lower, a buyer said.

A trader in the balmy Northeast region reported being idle,saying, “I can’t cover my variable transportation costs to themarket area. There’s not enough separation between production areaand delivered prices to make any money. For instances, it takes42-45 cents to get to Texas Eastern’s M-3 pool, but the EastLouisiana was not much more than 30 cents lower Tuesday.”

It was an easy day for a Gulf Coast producer. “I did all mysales on four pipes in volumes of 10 MMcf/d each and all within a5-cent range,” he noted.

It seems safe to expect at least modest cash upticks today sincethe screen didn’t register a small gain until after spending thecash trading period in negative territory, a producer said.However, we can also expect trading action to remain fairly slow,he added, because everyone will be waiting on the “weekly ritual”of finding out the AGA storage number.

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