A Houston marketer invoked the wisdom of baseball great YogiBerra to describe Tuesday’s cash market: “It’s deja vu all overagain.” In other words, it was like most of February’s previoustrading activity-generally flat with tight ranges. However, thoughthere was little if any change at any point, whatever changes didoccur were slightly to the downside. They were limited to 1-3 centsin all cases.

Prices weakened just a bit, but not as much as it appeared theywould in the early going, said a Midwest source. He was hearingearly Chicago citygate quotes at just under $1.80, but said thatmarket soon settled into the low $1.80s. And although ranges weretight at most points, he saw relatively large ones of $1.81-88 fordeliveries to both of Michigan’s large LDCs.

Trading was quite lackluster once again, one participant said.He and others noted a considerable thinning of market liquidity dueto many traders being either already at or on their way to HoustonEnergy Expo. Usually on a Tuesday following a holiday, nobody wantsto do anything longer than one-day deals, a marketer noted. Butyesterday, he said, it was easy to deal on a multi-day basis ratherthan day to day because of the expo.

“One more month of this [flatness and lack of volatility] andeverybody will be going to sleep,” a Gulf Coast trader said.February is even worse than January, in his view; at least lastmonth the price ranges tended to be larger even if the averagesdidn’t move much.

A Calgary marketer found it curious that Westcoast still has aforce majeure in place at the McMahon Plant even when operations therereportedly have returned to normal since the Jan. 27 explosions andfire at a neighboring Solex extraction plant (see Daily GPI, Jan. 28). At least the forcemajeure is having little impact at Sumas, which recently has tradedaround $1.60, he said.

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