Despite consensus that the latest storage and weather news has beenbearish, the cash market did little more than march in place Thursdaywith only slight gains dominating at the great majority of points. Asmidgen of softness showed up in the Southwest basins, and theRockies, largely because of El Paso having lifted a low-linepack OFOlate Wednesday afternoon (see Daily GPI, Jan. 6).

The end of El Paso’s OFO came too late to affect the marketWednesday but was the primary factor in Thursday’s slight downturn,a marketer said. He thought the order had “artificially inflated”San Juan and Permian numbers a little above their true valueearlier this week anyway. However, the marketer added, powergeneration burns are up a bit along with electric prices inCalifornia and at other western points due to the 1,400-MW PaloVerde nuclear plant going down for about a week.

Several traders saw the lack of change in most prices as apostponement of imminent softness rather than any hint of marketfirmness. “We think fundamentally cash should be coming off somemore,” one said. “We’ve definitely got room in the $2.00-10 rangefor Gulf Coast gas.” However, he did see one positive price sign:”We had some utilities returning gas to us on Monday, but none havesince then.”

A Northeast buyer concurred that there’s considerable downsideand little upside for cash numbers. Looking at the rest of January,the “bad” weather days will just be normal for this time of year,and there won’t be many “bad” days coming up.

One source suggested that although the Y2K bug was a noneventfor the gas industry, the flu bug may be a factor in the marketbeing so static in the first week of 2000. Many trading rooms havebeen decimated by workers being out sick, he said, and theconsequent shorthandedness may have people tending to keep theirtrading activity more conservative than usual.

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