Despite it remaining unclear Friday whether Tropical Depression8 (expected to become Tropical Storm Hermine by Saturday) wouldhave substantive and lasting impact on Gulf of Mexico production,just the possibility was enough to propel cash prices upward byanywhere from a dime to 20 cents at eastern points. Westernmarkets, more removed from the Gulf supply outages, also rose butmostly by a dime or less. The double-digit uptick on the futuresscreen did more than anything fundamental to boost numbers in theWest, a marketer said.

One source opined that the Gulf storm “is now [Friday] expectedto be almost a non-event. Considering this is the third storm thismonth, I wouldn’t be surprised if the more aggressive producersbegan to start placing people back out on production rigs” over theweekend.

There was no doubt about platform evauations and productionoutages occurring Friday, but they seemed much more tentative thanthose under Tropical Storms Earl and Frances. With its largeoffshore exposure, Transco again was reporting the largest lossesof 300 MMcf/d but described that as “still relatively minimal.” Gascontrol officials said it was hard to tell if the figure would growor not, a Transco spokesman said.

ANR said it was evacuating the Eugene Island 188 platform andputting it in bypass mode (i.e., there was no platform compressionbut upstream producers who were able could push gas through thepoint). EI 188 throughput Friday was about 500 MMcf/d, down fromthe normal 650-700 MMcf/d, ANR said. Meanwhile its affiliate HIOSwas down 180 MMcf/d but was not evacuating any facilities.

Columbia Gulf was starting to evacuate platforms Friday morningand also was putting them on bypass operation. It had lost only50-60 MMcf/d but expected the level to rise, a spokesman said.Likewise, Stingray pulled its crew from West Cameron 509 and put iton bypass, reporting an outage of about 50 MMcf/d from deepwaterwells. Enron said there was no change from Thursday in its pipes’status, with Florida Gas Transmission down about 70 MMcf/d fromMobile Bay and no outages on MOPS. Both Koch Gateway and Sonat/SeaRobin reported outages as “nothing appreciable.”

Perhaps some doubt about the storm’s impact was showing up assources reported falling numbers in late deals. One described HenryHub activity as “swift and brutal this [Friday] morning. Over thecounter came out very strong and that had cash buyers panickingearly.” They bought anything offered while sellers kept raisingtheir offers, he said. Then after about 20 minutes all the buyerswere finished and anybody that had gas left to sell was forced toaccept lower prices for the rest of the session.

A Northeastern power generator said he was buying only minimumgas to keep a couple of units running because gas had risen abovehis fuel oil costs.

Today “ought to be really interesting,” a Texas marketer said.The effects of TD8 likely will be fading, and if Hurricane Georges(still in the central Atlantic Friday) goes away, expect a”drastic” price downturn, she said.

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