Nearly all prices continued to climb Tuesday but at a slowerpace than on the day before. Few points advanced more than a dime,San Juan Basin and the Southern California border were flat, andSumas prices into Northwest saw the rare decline of about a nickel.

Rising futures and hotter weather in the Northeast were startingto play a greater role in the cash market as traders got morecomfortable with the fact that storm threats to Gulf of Mexicoproduction are really not that strong at this point, aHouston-based source said. Hurricane Alberto remained far from anyland mass and was considered fairly unlikely to enter the Gulf.

A tropical wave that previously was over Mexico’s YucatanPeninsula had entered the Bay of Campeche, the National WeatherService said, while another tropical wave was producing showers andthunderstorms in a wide area around the southern Bahamas. TheHouston trader considered the Bahamas wave much more significant,saying the one in the Bay of Campeche appears likely to fizzle outover Mexico. The Bahamas-area disturbance, on the other hand, stillstands a chance of making a run into the Gulf, he said.

A marketer in South Texas was finding little utility load asrains from the Bay of Campeche tropical wave cooled off the TexasGulf Coast a bit. He was taking most of his gas to Waha, whereprices averaged about a dime higher than most South Texas points.

A few quotes for Transco’s Zone 6-NYC pool were surpassing the$5 level in response to air conditioning load that had not been asignificant factor in the Northeast market for nearly two months.

A marketer said an analytical group that he called “one of themost consistently accurate predictors” of the weekly AGA storagereport is calling for an injection figure in the 37-44 Bcf rangetoday, “but I’m way up at 58-60 [Bcf] myself.” Because of lastweek’s steady succession of California electrical emergencies andsevere heat in neighboring states, another source expects that lastweek’s report of a small net withdrawal in the Consuming RegionWest is likely to get larger this time.

Meanwhile, a Gulf Coast trader asked for his prediction laughedand said, “I gave up guessing on the storage reports about a dollarand a half ago.”

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