Sources were searching for new ways of expressing “flat” as1999’s relative lack of volatility in day trading continued Monday.A lot of zeroes were showing up in the average-change column of theprice table even as lack of fundamentals again failed to depresscash numbers. A Southwest trader reporting “not much demand andplenty of supply available” was surprised that prices weren’t goingdown.

Points associated with the intra-Alberta market (Sumas,Stanfield, Malin, PG&E citygate) tended to gain about a nickelor so due to a Sunday evening rupture on NOVA’s Edson Mainline innorthwest Alberta (see Transportation Notes). But they were fallingback in late trading after people realized any supply outage wouldbe short-lived and fairly minor, sources said. NOVA scaled back itsestimate of Western Gate (A/BC Border) curtailments from a largerone early Monday, and any related Eastern Gate (Empress) shortfallswere easily made up with Aeco C storage withdrawals, a marketersaid. There was essentially no rupture effect on Southwest markets,another trader said.

Intra-Alberta quotes initially jumped about C15 cents on therupture news to as high as C$2.40 and then traded throughout theC$2.30s, according to a marketer. Two winters ago something likethe NOVA incident would have caused prices to spike above C$3, headded, but not now. Similarly, Sumas climbed to the high US$1.60sin an early reaction but later sank into the high US$1.50s, flatfrom Friday, another source said.

A winter storm was on the West Coast Monday and was predicted tosweep eastward and arrive on the East Coast toward the weekend.That has some LDCs in the Northeast talking about returning gas tosuppliers Wednesday and Thursday, then maybe asking for it backagain on Friday, a trader said. Those utilities have some hardchoices to make about managing storage in the next few weeks, hesaid, recalling that Columbia-Appalachia is requiring them to getdown to 25% inventory levels by April 1 (see Daily GPI, Feb. 8). Heunderstood that TCO storage fields currently are just over halffull.

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