As expected, swing prices resumed their downhill march Thursday,but there was enough winter weather across the northern half of theU.S. to keep most of the declines fairly moderate. Except fortriple-digit drops in California, few points fell more than about20 cents or so.

Traders still saw almost no chance of a price rally anytimesoon, even with snowy conditions remaining in the Midwest, a winterstorm sweeping through the East and bringing snow as far south asNorth Carolina, and another winter storm coming ashore on the WestCoast. “Too little, too late” was the gist of their bearishfeelings. Warmups are due in northern market areas over theweekend, and the National Weather Service continues to projectabove normal temperatures next week over most regions east of theRockies.

A screen that dithered in the vicinity of flat all day was atotal non-event for cash, a marketer said.

The border led huge California declines but remained the mostexpensive point by far at more than $16. However, one trader saidthe new storm “could put a little bit of upward pressure” on GoldenState prices again. That wouldn’t matter to one major buyer,however. One of the largest textile firms in the Los Angeles areaannounced it was shutting down operations for good because of notbeing able to afford natural gas any longer.

An electric utility buyer in the South said he has dipped intothe swing market only rarely this month. Besides having very littleload in the midst of a streak of mostly mild weather, he said thatall solid-fuel units are active, and term gas along with “a littlestorage” was quite adequate on the few occasions when a gas peakerwas fired up.

Bidweek got off to a very quiet start, as usual. It was theusual round of tire-kicking and not much else, sources said. Itlooks pretty likely that little March business (other than someindexed and basis deals) will get done until Monday or later, autility buyer said, because of a weekend again splitting thetrading period and March futures not settling until Monday. Also,people will have fresh weather forecasts to work with after theweekend, he added.

A western trader reported Southern California border basis atplus 900, and said fixed prices there were in the $14.00-$14.50range. A Midwestern source quoted ANR ML-7 basis at plus 29, andMichCon and Consumers Power at plus 23-23.5. There’s essentially nodifference between physical and paper basis for the utilitycitygates because indexing is about flat, ranging from minus 0.5bid to plus 0.5 ask, he said.

©Copyright 2001 Intelligence Press Inc. All rights reserved. Thepreceding news report may not be republished or redistributed, inwhole or in part, in any form, without prior written consent ofIntelligence Press, Inc.