Other than moderately cooler weather in the West, traders couldfind little fundamental support for cash prices Wednesday yet stillmanaged to push them higher at most points by small amounts ofabout a nickel or less. Two or three Northeast points were the onlyones exhibiting slight softness.

Sources could find little to peg the cash rises to other than amodest increase of less than a nickel in gas futures. The Aprilcrude oil contract had already settled Tuesday at $28 even, but thecontracts through early next year continued to drop. However,heating oil futures showed a slight rebound.

Despite the warmer weather trends, cash numbers still seem to befairly well supported for the last couple of days, a Gulf Coastmarketer said. They’re mainly “just moving in step with the Merc”and managing to stay pretty well above index levels, he added. “Wehaven’t seen any significant changes in our load patternsrecently.”

In addition to cooler western temperatures, a Palo Verde nuclearunit scheduled to go down early in April for about a month ofmaintenance was helping to keep the Southern California borderfirm, one trader said. He thought some people were trying to gearup for that event by putting gas into storage in advance.

A marketer observed that in the last few months a trend has beendeveloping in which more people are trading for the succeedingmonth throughout the current month rather than waiting for thetraditional bidweek. Now that seems to be spreading to dailymarkets, he said. Instead of waiting until 9 a.m. CST or later tosee how prices are developing, he went on, they’re now well underway by 8:30 or so.

Some traders expect the recent modest price firmness to continueat least through today based on AGA’s Wednesday afternoon report of62 Bcf in storage withdrawals last week. “That was very strong,”exclaimed one source.

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