Much of the price hemorrhaging that dominated the latter half oflast week’s cash market was well on its way to being stanchedMonday. Eastern points were only a tad softer, with few falling anymore than about a nickel, and most western points realized small tomoderate gains.

Although temperatures remain fairly mild for late October, thereis a mild cooling-off trend under way in parts of the Northeast andUpper Plains. In addition, there was strength across the naturalgas/crude oil/heating oil energy futures complex Monday. Becausethe natural gas screen did not make much of its dime-plus movehigher until after cash trading had finished, at least one marketersaw a reason for it to support the cash market today.

The PG&E citygate, which had suffered mightily Thursday andFriday due to utility OFOs, made Monday’s biggest advance of nearlya quarter as no OFOs were in effect. Upticks in the Rockies andSouthwest basins were less than a dime and attributed to a bit ofchilly and wet weather in parts of the West.

Although Waha numbers were up only a couple of cents, a marketerconsidered it relatively strong “considering the [mild] weatherwe’re having.” Prices moved up steadily throughout the morning, hesaid, and although the marketer did most of his Waha trading in themid $4.70s, he was able to make a late sale at $4.85.

Since Alliance Pipeline did not announce a new two-week delay inofficial startup until late Friday afternoon (see Daily GPI, Oct. 23), there was essentially no timefor market reaction then. It probably didn’t matter, though, becausetraders reported no significant market movement Monday as the news gotaround.

“I was expecting Chicago to show some extra strength” sinceextra supplies expected to show up at the citygate via Alliancewould not arrive until mid-November, “but it didn’t happen,” onetrader said. He and another source concurred that Chicago basis wasunchanged from around plus 14. Basis for the November-March winterstrip is plus 13.5-14, the first trader said. Traders seem tothink, “It’s no big deal; so what if Alliance another couple ofweeks further off?” he added.

A Calgary-based producer also saw almost no change inintra-Alberta basis Monday after mild softness had been reportedthere Friday. However, he had planned to baseload some gas onAlliance into ANR at the Chicago terminus, “and now we’ve got tofind another home for it for the first half of November.” Hethought people are anticipating at least one or two “hiccups” inNovember after Alliance does get going, explaining he meant flowinterruptions lasting one or two days “while they work the bugs outof the system.”

A staffer for a large marketer said his office pool wasprojecting a 50-60 Bcf storage refill report by AGA Wednesdayafternoon, “but I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see it go higherthan that because gas burns were way down during last week’s mildweather.”

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