“Following the screen”-a market catch-phrase that hasn’t been asmuch in vogue in recent weeks as it used to be-regained popularityMonday as cash prices had little else on which to base modestfirming. New quotes ranged from essentially flat in the Californiaand Northeast markets to as much as a nickel or so higher at pointssuch as the Chicago citygate and El Paso-San Juan (Blanco). Withweather in most areas staying mild and the storage situation stillbearish, it’s hard to see where else beside futures that cash couldhave derived any strength, sources said.

A Northwest Pipeline rupture Friday night east of Portland (see Daily GPI, March 1) had little appreciableimpact on prices. Despite a fireball being shown against the nightsky by local and national television, there were no injuries andservice interruptions were minimal.

A Houston trader who needed to work Sunday because of therupture said it appeared that day Northwest was “dumping as muchgas as possible” into PG&E Gas Transmission. But Northwest waskeeping markets whole, he said, which dampened any pricing impact.

His report was borne out Monday. Sumas numbers rose from thehigh $1.40s Friday to the low $1.50s Monday, but that did littlemore than match the overall market performance. Gas demand in theSeattle area helped support the Sumas market since Seattle could nolonger receive much gas from the downstream end of bi-directionalNorthwest due to the line break. Also, the pipeline was askingcustomer cooperation in nominating from Sumas/Sipi where possible.And a marketer noted that the Highway Plant in northern BritishColumbia was down, taking about 40 MMcf/d of Westcoast supplieswith it and “juicing up” Sumas just a bit more.

Northwest-domestic quotes were flat in the $1.40 area.

In a Saturday morning bulletin board posting, Northwest said itwould keep markets whole out of Jackson Prairie storage. But itanticipated a potential problem with Clay Basin storage, saying dueto the rupture it probably would need to inject up to 200,000 dth/dinto Clay Basin with only about 600,000 dth of space remaining.However, as of the start of Monday’s gas day Clay Basin operatorQuestar Pipeline had revised its capacity figures to indicate thefacility still had about 790,000 dth available, according to JeffMcNeil, Northwest’s manager of marketing services. He estimated thepipeline had injected about 150,000 dth Saturday and 250,000 dthSunday and would put in another 300,000 dth Monday. The revisednumbers still allow Northwest some extra cushion for a few moredays, McNeil said.

In Monday’s overall cash market, “the screen got us going earlytoday,” one marketer said. Pointing out a couple of somewhatbullish cash signs, he said a number of storage forecasters werelooking for “a healthy 120-125 Bcf” of withdrawals in Wednesdayafternoon’s AGA report and that weather, while mild Monday, isexpected to turn colder by the weekend.

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