San Juan Basin and California were conspicuous Monday as theonly markets swimming against a bearish tide. All other cash pointswere falling by anywhere from a penny or two (Southwest/Rockies) to15 cents or more, with the majority of declines tending to bebetween a nickel and a dime.

It was easy to see why softness would continue to prevail inmost cases because of warming trends developing in major marketareas of the North and very weak energy futures, one trader said.Crude oil futures plunged nearly a dollar and a half to less than$30/bbl, he noted.

However, a western marketer said his staff was “boggled” to seeSan Juan and California numbers on the rise while just abouteverything else was off at least a couple of pennies or more. Theonly rationale he could find for their upticks was that pricesthere had been battered by a barrage of high-inventory OFOs by thetwo major California LDCs over the previous week, and this was a”correction” of previously artificially depressed pricing.

Kern River and Northwest (domestic) quotes experienced some ofMonday’s smallest declines partly due to Muddy Creek maintenancestarting today and running through Friday. That is cutting Opalsupplies by an estimated 80 MMcf/d this week.

Maintenance has ended at Westcoast’s Fort Nelson Plant, amarketer said, but he was rather surprised not to see a significantincrease in supplies at Sumas. Nevertheless, Sumas prices droppedby more than a nickel while Northwest domestic numbers were downonly a couple of cents.

A source making intra-Alberta purchases in the high C$3.40sduring the morning said prices continued to fall into the lowC$3.40s that afternoon. That market tracks the screen very closely,he said. In addition, the NOVA system was packing a little, hesaid; the pipe’s linepack target is 14.2 Bcf “and it’s now at14.3-plus Bcf.”

One trader reported physical basis for April at the Chicagocitygate as plus 5.25.

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