As several observers expected, cash prices started to retracetheir steps back down Thursday after having peaked the day before.Declines ranged from as little as a nickel to nearly 15 cents, butmost were in the neighborhood of a dime.

Traders look for more softening today, saying weather willaccentuate the usual lowering of gas load over a weekend. Thecurrent cold spell in the Northeast is due to warm up a bit, abuyer in the area noted. Another source said Midwest temperatureswere already starting to moderate. Utilities there weren’t buyingas heavily Thursday as they had been earlier in the week.

A Gulf Coast producer provided evidence of a price slide, sayingan electronic trading service was showing Henry Hub prices of$1.865-90 for the weekend, with nearly all of the volume under$1.90.

A marketer was seeing a very small Katy-Waha differential,attributing it mainly to continued demand from the warm West andplentiful gas supplies in the East.

After defying the overall market trend with a drop Wednesday,intra-Alberta was at it again Thursday with a flat performance inthe mid C$2.50s. A Calgary source sees “a little hiccup on theradar” for Monday’s gas day, when scheduled maintenance at theWestern Gate will back about 200 MMcf/d into the province. Thatwill probably cause day prices to soften, but things should pick upagain Tuesday because the outage will last only one day, he said.

“Bidweek is starting to look pretty ugly,” according to a Texasproducer. The six-to-10-day weather forecast is calling forabove-normal temperatures in much of the nation, she said. Amarketer pegged Chicago basis for November at plus 17.5, addingthat was down about 2 cents from earlier

One source said he was doing intra-Alberta deals for November inthe mid C$2.70s Thursday, flat from a day earlier. Another beggedto differ, however, saying he was seeing November numbers in thehigh C$2.60s and low C$2.70s.

A trader hearing Malin talk in the mid $2.30s for next monthexpects a tighter Malin-Southern California border spread thanusual. He thinks they will be 8-15 cents apart (GPI indexes forOctober showed a gap of 22 cents).

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