Most of the East was flat to slightly higher Tuesday, although afew points registered gains of more than a nickel. But westernprices softened by as much as a dime despite a continuation ofpower shortages in California.

Everything is still down from indexes, said a Northeast trader,but since most of the screen’s eventual run-up of more than 20cents came after cash activity had finished, there’s a good chanceprices may reach index levels or higher today. In addition, shealso thought some people were looking ahead to a Northeast warm-uppredicted within the next day or so.

A number of utilities and end-users had indicated to GPI theywere baseloading little or no August gas because they expected arepeat of the July aftermarket, in which prices traded below indexall month long. A producer said Tuesday that may be starting tolook like poor strategy. Except for California and the Southwest,few areas have experienced their normal quotas of summer heat yet,he noted. And the possibility of a Gulf hurricane is starting togrow after two months of no Atlantic tropical storm activity, headded.

California was the weakest market of all Tuesday with losses atall three major trading points. This happened even though theCalifornia Independent System Operator proceeded again to a StageTwo Electrical Emergency, which asked the state’s three biggestelectric utilities to curtail interruptible customers. Theemergency should have spurred all gas-fired peaking generators toall-out production.

A Malin trader said the point rose to within a few pennies ofthe $3.91 August index before “crashing and burning” late into the$3.60s. The late dive suggested to her that a lot of people cameinto the month long at Malin and overzealously tried to takeadvantage of its initial firmness.

Intra-Alberta was a rare western market posting solid gainsTuesday. Part of the reason was NOVA field receipts that were a bitlow, said a Calgary source, but the primary impetus came fromfollowing the futures explosion higher after most U.S. trading hadconcluded.

One marketer said his company was hearing storage reportpredictions centered mostly on the 55-65 Bcf injection range, whichthey considered essentially neutral to the cash market.

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