After tapping on the brakes a few times Wednesday, theresurgence in November prices had its foot back on the acceleratorThursday. While not quite pedal-to-the-metal as in Tuesday’s gainsthat often hit 30 cents or more, double-digit increases againdominated the cash market.

Much as “location” is the be-all and end-all to real estateagents, to most gas traders the driver of Thursday’s upticks was”weather, weather, weather.” Though hardly blizzard-like anywhere,there were enough cold temperatures to keep demand rising, amarketer said. Even Houston was feeling a chill.

But one source contended that a futures rise of more than 15cents had as much to do with cash prices as the weather did. “Thescreen appeared to have a lot of influence on cash despite storagelevels being at their current near-full levels,” he said. He looksfor more cash strength today because of the big futures gain. Amarketer confessed he was surprised cash rose so much followingwhat many considered a bearish AGA storage injection report of 48Bcf.

“The mentality is that it’s colder than normal this early, sonobody wants to pull from storage but they’ve still got to covergas needs from the cold, so they’re paying up,” according to aDallas-area source.

Intra-Alberta saw an increase of more than C20 cents into thelow C$2.70s for swing gas, a marketer said, but he expects pricesto come off today “because NOVA linepack is building up again.” Hemanaged to make a couple of baseload deals at C$2.75-80 Thursday.

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