The cash market was back on a downhill slide Wednesday as theuprising that had carried some points as much as 80-90 cents higherin the first two days of the week ran out of gas. The retrenchmentwas not unexpected because futures were falling for the second dayin a row and the colder weather that had driven the earlier uptickswas giving way to new forecasts calling for no colder than “normal”temperatures in many areas.

Most of Wednesday’s declines were in the range of 15-25 cents.Some Canadian points defied the overall softness, however.Intra-Alberta gained about a dime to the C$2.20 area, but it washandily outpaced by Westcoast Station 2 quotes on either side ofC$2.40. Besides cold weather in the Pacific Northwest, an estimated50 MMcf/d was curtailed by an explosion of the Kobes Lateralfeeding into Westcoast’s McMahon Plant, a Calgary trader said.Confirming the late Tuesday rupture, Westcoast said it expected tohave the line back in service by late tonight. Related points suchas Sumas made a small gain to the high US$1.90s and Stanfield fellonly about a nickel.

While acknowledging that some producers were shutting in gaslate last week due to super-low prices, a big Gulf Coast producersaid it chose to accelerate some well maintenance instead as a moreeffective way of taking production off the market for a short time.

Questar’s unscheduled outage of a compressor at Eakin Station(Uinta County, WY) was causing one trader “a big pain.” Becauselittle more than 10% of her scheduled gas was getting through thestation, she was having to shuffle a lot of nominations in order tomeet obligations to customers.

A power outage that affected much of San Francisco Tuesday hadno effect on nominations to Pacific Gas & Electric that day, amarketer said, since the utility’s computer nominations system islocated about 30 miles northeast of the city toward Sacramento.

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