As expected, Christmas Eve was pretty much a non-event in thecash market. Virtually all holiday weekend business through todayhad been taken care of Wednesday, and though a number of tradersdid put in brief appearances at the office Thursday, they didlittle more than check what futures was doing in an abbreviatedtrading session. “We had to come in for the first half of the dayor else count it as a whole vacation day,” one marketer commented.

A Texas trader said he managed to make a few January deals, butthey were all indexed. Another source mentioned seeing Chicagotrade at $1.97 for January on an electronic trading service.

It seemed that with Northern Border suspending its fledglingdeliveries into Chicago through Sunday at least (see Daily GPI,Dec. 24), there might be some people scrounging around for make-upgas. But a marketer said he was unable to detect any such activityThursday, adding, “I think the Chicago market’s just fine. NorthernBorder was just a little bit of extra gas for it.” He thinks therewill be two or three more such stoppages in the next month or so.Excessive hydrates was the pipeline’s problem, the marketer said,”and you can only get so much water out each time you try todehydrate the line.”

Another trader suspected that some people tried to chase Chicagobasis for January higher due to the Northern Border outage, “butthat was just a five-minute hiccup” that had no appreciable marketimpact.

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