People that had been dismissing Tropical Storm Frances as barelya blip on the gas market’s radar screen Wednesday were paying muchcloser attention Thursday as production outages grew and cashprices went up in the neighborhood of a dime at nearly all points.Prices in areas not directly affected by the storm outages werebeing pulled up largely by the futures screen’s big jump, sourcessaid. Also, the AGA’s Wednesday afternoon report of a smallish 35Bcf in storage withdrawals last week helped set the stage for priceincreases everywhere, a Texas marketer said.

Normally Northeast citygates would have been falling becausethere is hardly any load at all in the cool weather there, onesource said. But some deliveries were being pushed back over the $2level totally because of the Gulf Coast run-up, she said. It wasworth it to her to buy delivered gas and leave the Gulf suppliesalone.

A producer said he could see no reason for higher Rockies pricesother than expectations of heat in California this weekend.

Coastal tropical storm warnings were extended Wednesday fromTampico, Mexico all the way to the mouth of the Pearl River, whichforms part of the border between Louisiana and Mississippi. ANational Weather Service advisory said those warnings might need tobe replaced by hurricane warnings as early as Thursday night.

Although Frances remained a little over 100 miles due east ofthe southern tip of Texas, the shut-ins it caused were spreadingalong the Louisiana coast, primarily due to the storm’sdisorganized nature. Transco was up to 800 MMcf/d in productionlosses Thursday, while HIOS was flowing about 510 MMcf/d, down fromits normal 900 MMcf/d. Outage estimates by Tennessee and ColumbiaGulf were 300 and 200 MMcf/d respectively. Stingray, which providesvirtually all of NGPL’s offshore supply, was down about 440 MMcf/d.Koch Gateway reported losing about 130 MMcf/d, mostly in the Erath(LA) area. MOPS (Matagorda Offshore Pipeline System), which feedsinto Florida Gas Transmission, was only flowing 40 MMcf/d comparedto its normal 130 MMcf/d. Although the Trunkline bulletin boardsaid production connected to the Terrebonne and Vermilion offshoresystems “has been significantly reduced,” a Duke Energy spokesmanwas unable to provide any volume figures for Trunkline or TexasEastern. Spokespeople for Sonat and TGT said they were unaware ofany losses by their pipelines.

The Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service reported667 MMcf/d of gas production and 44,008 b/d of oil production hadbeen curtailed by mid-day by 17 producers. In total, 81 platformsand 15 rigs had been evacuated, MMS said. Amoco (not represented inthe MMS report) said it shut in 280 MMcf/d and pulled about 90employees off platforms in the Matagorda Island, East Cameron, WestCameron and Eugene Island areas. “At first we were just evacuatingand shutting in in the western Gulf,” a spokesman said, but as theimpact of Frances continued to spread the company started extendingevacuations to offshore southwest Louisiana.

In the MMS report, Unocal’s Spirit Energy 76 reported thegreatest impact with 29 platforms evacuated, 21,065 b/d of oilcurtailed and 197 MMcf/d of gas shut in. OXY reported shut-ins of150 MMcf/d, and CNG Producing curtailed 116 MMcf/d and evacuated 14platforms.

“Even though the storm is off the Texas coast near Brownsville,the bands of wind and rain and the high surf were nearly Gulf-wideand already were causing flooding into Texas,” noted Spirit Energy76’s Christine LeLaurin. “We’ve had to shut in 18% of our Gulf gasproduction and 41% of our Gulf oil production and evacuated 198workers.” Spirit Energy 76 still had 150 personnel on duty in theCentral Gulf and Mobile Bay.

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