The relatively small declines in Eastern markets Fridaysurprised some traders. Although down another 2-5 cents overall,pipes in the Gulf Coast and Midcontinent were rebounding late tolevels essentially flat from Thursday. The weakness in Thursdayafternoon’s Access futures trading pushed prices down early Friday,a marketer said, “then things came back up when the Merc showed alittle strength.” Although the screen eventually shed its gains towind up basically unchanged, that occurred too late to impact cashtrading.

The northern U.S. was experiencing unusually cool to coldtemperatures for June, so undoubtedly there was a bit of heatingload for gas, one source said. But most saw little impact from thecold and gave more credit to the screen for rallying cash numbers.

The utilities weren’t very active in buying gas Friday, aMidcontinent trader said, but he suspects enough marketingcompanies have started running short on supplies to keep pricedrops small. In the same vein, a marketer thinks a small supplysqeeze at the end of trading was enough to boost a couple of lateSan Juan-Blanco deals back above $1.50.

Many Western points were crushed in comparison to the East. TheRockies dropped as low as $1.29 in one Kern River quote, and thePG&E citygate and Southern California border saw drops of about20 cents and 12 cents respectively. Intra-Alberta fell to C$1.63-64as more gas started returning to market due to some plantturnarounds ending Friday, a Calgary source said. More smallturnarounds are due this week but they should have much less impacton the market, she added.

A Texas trader expects some “pop back up” in prices today,saying he had seen a forecast that the Northeast might be gettingwarm enough this week to generate some air conditioning load.

Though nothing like the gaps of 60 cents or more that existed asrecently as 1996, the distance between Permian and San Juan priceshas widened. Permian gas, still getting some load from the Texasair conditioning market Friday, was running more than 20 centsabove San Juan-Blanco quotes in the $1.40s. June indexes were only11 cents apart.

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