The meltdown in weekend prices Friday made at least one traderthink of Chernobyl. A few points fell only a little more than 15cents, but a majority of the declines exceeded 20 cents, andOFO-infested California numbers were down about half a dollar atthe border.

A screen that was a few cents higher during the morning beforeeventually settling slightly down did little to cancel out thehugely negative guidance to the cash market provided by Thursday’sfutures plunge of nearly 30 cents. In addition, outside of a torridSouth and Southwest, forecasts of milder weather elsewhere gaveprices no incentive to try to move higher.

However, although the Northeast is expected to cool off over theweekend, it was hot enough there Friday that a marketer reported anintra-day Transco Zone 6-NYC sale at $4.75, about a quarter abovethe weekend average. “Apparently Northeasterners are sweatingtoday, [Friday] but looking forward to cutting back on the airconditioners soon,” he said.

There was definitely a contrast on opposite sides of the U.S.going into the weekend. Both of California’s two big distributorsissued OFOs to guard against high linepack (see TransportationNotes). Meanwhile, citing high demand in its market area, FloridaGas Transmission declared an OFO to guard against low linepack.

Nearly all points tended to get weaker as the morning wore on;one source reporting more than half a dozen Southern Californiaborder deals, said the first started at $4.40 and the rest keptdropping steadily in reaction to the OFO until they reached $4.20in his last trade. However, an exception was El Paso-Permian,according to a marketer. He bought a package there early at $3.98and was able to resell it later at $4.08. An upcoming outage of theBlanco Plant in San Juan Basin likely was why Permian prices werebetter able than most to resist the softening trend, the marketersaid. “Permian gas was perceived as getting more valuable as peopleprepared for the cutback in San Juan supplies.”

El Paso calls the shutdown of the Blanco (NM) Plant its biggestsingle outage of the year, reducing total system capacity by about15%. The shutdown, starting today and running through Friday, isreducing San Juan Basin capacity by 600 MMcf/d today (theconstraint will be 500 MMcf/d Tuesday through Thursday and then100-200 MMcf/d Friday as a portion of the plant’s facilities returnto service).

Despite Friday’s market plunge, a producer found some reason toexpect a return of moderate bullishness. The National WeatherService revised its six- to 10-day forecast to indicate hotterweather over most of the nation from the Rockies eastward than ithad previously expected, he explained. That helped boost Accessfutures trading more than a nickel Friday afternoon over the Julycontract’s daily settlement at $4.043, he said.

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