A quiet market week showed no inclination for change going intothe weekend. Most points ranged from flat to up a dime, but only afew rose more than a nickel or so. Major departures from theoverall market trend were (where else?) in California, where Malinpushed nearly a dollar higher while the border and PG&Ecitygate slipped about 35-40 cents each.

After a tiny screen rise on Thursday, futures made slow butsteady advances during Friday morning’s cash trading to providesome support. Also, moderate winter storm activity was picking upas a new system moved eastward over the Upper Midwest. However, aTulsa-based trader said that although a “little” cold front wouldbe coming through the Midcontinent over the weekend, “it won’t beenough to make any difference” to the gas market.

Adding to earlier citations of spring break vacations andpreparations for this week’s trade fair in Houston, in explainingwhy the market seemed so “dead” last week to so many sources, amarketer noted the NCAA college basketball tournament was drawingthe attention of a lot of traders. “We’re watching it on TV here,”he said Friday afternoon. He also jested that “spring fever” mightbe getting some in the trading community restless. (A Houstonproducer also noted that a golf tournament sponsored by a gasbroker had many of the local traders knocking off work earlyFriday.)

More seriously, the marketer said, cash has been somewhat “tieddown by range-bound futures. The screen hasn’t broken out of a$4.90-5.11 spread over the last couple of weeks, and cash is kindof ‘floating’ along with it.”

A producer said cooler weather in West Texas continued to narrowthe Waha/Katy spread to only 2-3 cents.

SoCal Gas confirmed that its storage levels had risen to thepoint that it would revert back to 70% daily balancing Saturday(that is, customers would have to cover only 70% of theirnominations with physically flowing gas and firm storage on a dailybasis, and would be able to use interruptible storage for therest). “We still plan to return to 90% monthly balancing when Aprilbegins,” said a SoCal spokeswoman.

A western trader cheered the SoCal news. “Going back to 70%balancing will ease a lot of pressure for traders who had troubleadjusting to 90% balancing,” he said. “Of course, it also will tendto depress border prices.”

Malin began the morning near its low end of $6.35 but had jumpednearly $2 at the end of trading, a Calgary source said. One reasonwas that PG&E’s Baja Path from the Southern California borderis restricted by about 190 MMcf/d from its normal capacity of 1,140MMcf/d through the end of March, she said. Also, some tradersthought PG&E’s linepack and storage situations were in goodshape again, so they waited in vain for falling prices and had toante up more money late, the source added.

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