While not plunging quite as steeply as the day before, pricesfor the weekend continued to record double-digit declines Friday.There was considerably more consistency across all markets than onThursday as virtually all points fell between 15 cents and about aquarter.

Even with strong advances in the nearby crude oil and heatingoil futures trading pits, the natural gas screen was a wee bitsofter and provided little influence to cash. Thus the marketrelied on the combination of continuing lack of weather-relateddemand and the usual weekend drop in gas load to send prices downagain.

Chicago citygates averaged below $5 for the first time since thesecond week of September.

Whereas a customer-specific OFO by PG&E had devastated citygateprices Thursday, pushing them about 45 cents lower for that day’sbiggest loss by far, an expansion of the OFO to a systemwide one (seeTransportation Notes) seemed to havemuch less impact Friday. Its decrease of about a quarter was matchedby several other points.

San Juan Basin numbers hung in stronger relative to the SouthernCalifornia border than some sources had expected. San Juan numbersactually firmed gradually as the morning went on, said anaggregator, attributing it to east-of-California utility buying anda cold front that was moving into the upper West Coast.

The announcement of another delay in Alliance Pipeline’s startupuntil Nov. 13 (see story in this issue)came too late Friday afternoon for most traders to provide anyreaction. However, one marketer said it likely means that Chicagoswing prices will be stronger through the first couple of weeks ofNovember than they otherwise would have been. “People won’t be able tobaseload on Alliance now, so they’ll just have to take their chancesin the day market” until Alliance arrives, he said.

Another source thought it kind of justified the fact thatChicago basis for November stayed strong even after VectorPipeline, a takeaway project, announced its own delay until Dec. 1.He wondered if traders might have suspected there would be anotherAlliance delay. That certainly seemed to be the case Friday in theintra-Alberta market, according to a Calgary marketer. “Albertabasis was weakening all day as if traders were anticipating anotherAlliance postponement,” she said.

Tropical Storm Nadine became the Atlantic’s 14th named storm ofthe 2000 hurricane season Friday, but was more than 450 miles eastof Bermuda and appeared likely to approximate Hurricane Michael’spath toward Canada’s Maritimes Provinces.

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