As expected, the cash market used the bullish futures reactionto Wednesday afternoon’s storage report as a springboard foracross-the-board gains of about a dime or more Thursday. But a latescreen retreat, continued lack of cooling load in northern marketareas and the usual dropoff in weekend demand raised doubts aboutany further increases today.

Although double-digit advances reigned in all markets, theytended to be largest in the Rockies, California and intra-Alberta.However, it was a little bit cooler in California, said a sourcewho resides in the state, and at press deadline the CaliforniaIndependent System Operator had progressed to a Stage TwoElectrical Emergency declaration, keeping in line with the previousthree days.

A Calgary trader reported intra-Alberta numbers starting aroundC$4.50 and rising into the low to mid C$4.80s, largely based on thescreen’s Wednesday afternoon run-up and relatively low NOVAlinepack.

Right now Nymex seems to be range-bound between $4.35 and $4.48,a Northeast marketer commented, and he sees little chance for anyupcoming breakouts in either cash or futures “until we get eitherno weather [falling prices] or ‘some’ weather [rising prices].”There still is some pretty decent heat in the South and West, butthat’s about it, he said. “Have people in the Northeast forgottenthere is such a season as summer?” The National Weather Servicereally goofed up on last week’s forecast of hot weather in theMidwest and Northeast this week, he added.

For the foreseeable future we’ll have a pretty a quiet market,the Northeast marketer went on. There are a couple of tropicalwaves way out in the Atlantic, “but they’re probably more excitingto surfers than gas traders,” he said.

Southern California border basis looks like its trying to blowout again due to a combination of weaker Nymex prices andcontinuing hot weather in California, according to a marketer. Inthe middle of last week, when the screen peaked at $4.565, borderbasis for September was trading in the plus mid-20s, he said. Nowit has more than doubled to plus 58-60, he added.

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