The screen giveth, and the screen taketh away. Wednesday was aday of taking away much of what had been given to cash prices theday before. As traders continued to play the Hurricane Georgesguessing game (will it or won’t it get close enough to the Gulf ofMexico production area to substantially impact offshore supplies?),quotes were falling across the board but mostly by lesser amountsthan they had risen on Tuesday. With a few exceptions prices werevolatile, with ranges of a dime or more seen at many points.

Fundamentals, whether related to weather or storm shut-ins,continued to be a non-event this week. Upper Midwest temperatureshave dropped as low as the upper 20s at night lately, a source inthe region said, but most residents have tended to put on extraclothes rather than turn on furnaces. Generally nice, crisp autumnweather reigns in Northern market areas. Air conditioners are stillrunning in Texas and Louisiana but not nearly as heavily as duringthe summer. Oklahoma has been enjoying mild temperatures but shouldrejoin Houston around 90 degrees this weekend, a Tulsa source said.

Chicago citygates were only slightly softer in the high $2.20sat first, one trader said, “but then there just weren’t any buyersaround anymore” and numbers began plunging to the high $2.10s.Consumers Power deliveries maintained a premium of 2-3 cents overMichCon citygates largely due to the extra storage capacity intoMichCon” system.

Anschutz Plant maintenance, which has limited volumes into KernRiver this week, should be ended by Friday. Despite that supplyconstraint, the Kern River decline of nearly a dime was among thebiggest in the Rockies Wednesday. Although PG&E did not issuean OFO, its projection of high linepack through Friday helped causemore decline at the PG&E citygate than at Malin or the SouthernCalifornia border.

A Texas marketer considered the AGA storage injection report of52 Bcf”kind of neutral,” neither bullish nor bearish. Itcertainly seemed more reasonable than last week’s 70 Bcf, she said.Despite causing serious flooding problems along the Louisiana andTexas coasts, Tropical Storm Hermine had caused less extensiveshut-ins than the two previous storms and the outages didn’t lastas long, she added.

The second-half surge in the 1998 hurricane season shows no signof letting up yet. Both Ivan and Jeanne had achieved hurricanestatus Wednesday, though they still had a lot of ocean to traversebefore reaching this hemisphere. Meanwhile Georges was moving intoeastern Cuba and expected to threaten the Florida Keys andpeninsula by Friday.

And guess what? Tropical Depression 11 has been detected northof Bermuda. Its origin isn’t certain, according to the NationalWeather Service, but could be related to a small low-pressure areaoff the coast of the Carolinas last week. “and/or the remnants ofHermine.” This is the 10th storm to form in the Atlantic during thelast 35 days, NWS said.

Although the October market still appears to be going up fromSeptember, early quotes are softening. Intra-Alberta deals that hadbeen ranging from the low to the high C$2.20s were solidly in thelow C$2.20s Wednesday for one marketer. Some Gulf Coast basis isquite soft, said a source who said he was offered ANR-Southeast atminus 11.25 and was hearing Trunkline-East LA at minus 11. AWestern trader reported Southern California border basis at minus1-2.

Special storm note: The National Hurricane Center saysforecasters have been “wincing” at hearing wild mispronunciationsof storm names such as the French Georges (call it ZHORZH) and theDutch Hermine (her-MEEN). Both come from a name list used forstorms in the Atlantic. “Purists wryly note that the names, whichre-appear in alphabetical order every six years [unless retiredafter being bestowed on a severe storm], have been frequentlymispronounced since first adopted in 1979,” NHC said. Aninternational agreement provides that tropical storm names reflectthe national cultures in countries bordering the western Atlantic.

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