Even with massive amounts of offshore gas remaining off-lineMonday, the gas markets for both late September and October bidweekchose to pay more attention to bearish fundamentals elsewhere.Except for rises of a nickel or more for deliveries in theNortheast market area, which depends mainly on Gulf Coast supplies,incremental September numbers were falling by a dime or more atmost points.

A Daily GPI check was unable to get complete outage figures butyielded a very conservative estimate of more than 6.5 Bcf/d ofoffshore gas shut in Monday due to Hurricane Georges.

A marketer was upset about having lost nearly all of hisTrunkline, ANR and Houston Pipe Line supplies “for almost everyweekend of September” due to storms, but what got his dander upeven more was suppliers cutting gas at the citygate and blaming iton force majeures in the Gulf Coast. “It is not how most peopleinterpret how force majeures should work,” he said.

A Midcontinent producer saw a yo-yo motion in October tradingMonday on Panhandle Eastern. After starting at $1.95, PEPL numbersfell about a dime along with the screen, he said. But at that pointthe buyers came out in droves and prices rebounded into the low$1.90s. September Midcontinent prices, being about 10 cents aboveOctobers, have a long way to go to converge, he added.

There was still a marked hesitancy Monday in the October marketto step out and do fixed prices, a Texas trader said. With thehurricane uncertainty concerning whether gas will flow, people wantto do index deals with EFP language tied to them, she said.

October prices have tended to soften from early quotes. SouthernCalifornia border packages that were in the $2.20s last week hadsunk to just under $2 Monday, a marketer said, and San Juan-Blancowas down to the high $1.60s. Meanwhile the Rockies pipes fell toaround $1.59-62 Monday compared to reports in the mid $1.70s latelast week.

A lot of uncertainty was involved in trying to ascertainoffshore production outages because of communication problems. Forinstance, a news story quoted a Minerals Management Serviceofficial as estimating that about 70% of the Gulf of Mexico’s 13Bcf/d in gas output was shut in Monday. But contacted by Daily GPI,the spokeswoman said that was just a guess because the MMS officein New Orleans had no power and was closed down.

Transco, reporting 1.9 Bcf/d in storm losses, said Station 82,right on the shore in Coden, AL, was down and the pipeline was outof touch with it. “We’re assuming people are starting to go backoffshore,” a spokeswoman said, “but communications are so bad rightnow that we just can’t find out what’s going on. We have not seenany significant return of production at this point.”

Most of the affected Gulf pipes had similar messages: theyunderstood that some crews were starting to return to the platformsMonday but weren’t registering any meaningful restoration ofproduction. Only Stingray, down as much as 450 MMcf/d over theweekend but only lacking 125 MMcf/d Monday, and Tennessee, whichsaid about 100 MMcf/d had returned from 500-750 MMcf/d in outagesthat morning, reported noticeable restorations.

Sonat had lost about 1 Bcf/d, while operated affiliates SeaRobin (450-500 MMcf/d) and Destin (100-120 MMcf/d) were shut inentirely. Columbia Gulf and Florida Gas reported 850 MMcf/d and 310MMcf/d in outages respectively.

ANR was down to 100 MMcf/d from a normal 750 MMcf/d, andoperated affiliate HIOS flows had dwindled to 270 MMcf/d from anormal 850 MMcf/d. Each pipe had evacuated its sol manned platform,a spokesman said.

Texas Eastern had everything shut down on its Venice (LA) Systemand most of it on the Cameron (LA) System, although Cameron offsouthwest Louisiana was starting to see a slow resumption of flows.A Duke Energy spokesman had no volume figures for Texas Eastern,but said Trunkline was down to about 100 MMcf/d from 800 MMcf/d onits Terrebonne system.

Shell reported it had shut in all of its total 1.3 Bcf/d inoffshore Gulf production. A spokeswoman had no word on whether anycrews were going back out because Shell’s New Orleans office hadclosed. Marathon also said all of its 130 MMcf/d of Gulf productionwas shut in. Exxon had evacuated about 300 workers in the centraland eastern Gulf, but anticipated returning crews to some centralGulf platforms starting Monday afternoon. Exxon said it was stilloperating its 435 MMcf/d Mobile Bay gas plant but had shut in somefields associated with the plant, which was running at reducedcapacity.

There was a loose cannon of sorts adrift east of Louisiana’sMississippi River delta and threatening to hit platforms and mobilerigs. According to the Coast Guard office in Baton Rouge, a435-foot Chinese-flag freighter named Golden Star broke itsmoorings in the Chandeleur Sound area, and the Guard had no contactwith it Monday afternoon. Asked if that meant the ship was floatingloose in the storm, a Coast Guard representative replied, “Yes,unless it’s already on the bottom [of the sea].” A news report saida tugboat was trying to bring the vessel, which had 19 peopleaboard, under control.

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