Cash traders apparently decided to ignore a relatively bearishstorage report, a retreat in Wednesday afternoon’s Access futurestrading and a further small downtick on the screen Thursday.Instead they focused on Wednesday’s jump of almost 20 cents inregular futures business and tried to match it in cash businessThursday-coming close in the cases of Agua Dulce and NGPL-SouthTexas, which both rose about 14 cents. Other points moved up in thevicinity of a dime. Standout exceptions were Malin andintra-Alberta, which managed increases of only a nickel or so. Themildness of the Malin uptick occurred even though PG&E failedto extend Thursday’s OFO.

And although it snowed Wednesday in the higher elevations ofnorthern Utah, hotter weather spreading into the Northeast andMidwest contributed to the bullish pricing. Right now the market isbeing driven mostly by the screen and balancing concerns, aNortheast trader said, but there will be more fundamental strengthnext week as the major population centers of the East Coast are dueto heat up even more.

Thanks to the continuing massive air conditioning load in Texas,Waha was trading only slightly under Henry Hub, while Katy was at asmall premium and Houston Ship Channel led the Hub by almost anickel.

The Rockies market was boosted into the $1.60s as demand fromCalifornia was rising, a marketer said. But of more immediateimportance to traders in the region is a big jump starting today inconstraints at the big Opal (WY) processing plant. Plant operatorWilliams Field Services had expected the maintenance restriction toremain at only 75 MMcf/d through June 24 (see Daily GPI, June 15).However, a mechanical failure occurred Wednesday night in one ofthe turbo-expanders, a WFS spokesman said. For that reason therestriction will rise to 340-360 MMcf/d out of normal 540-560MMcf/d operation today through Monday, although it should startreturning to 75 MMcf/d sometime Monday, he said.

News that the unexpected Opal situation would be taking a bigchunk of supplies off the market had people “scrambling for renomgas,” one trader said. A big aggregator concurred, commenting that”Opal is making it pretty ugly for us. We’re trying to assess thedamage now.” It’s certain to send Rockies prices even higher today,he added.

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