This week’s seesaw ride in prices continued Thursday withdouble-digit advances in all markets. Wednesday afternoon’s screenrise, which carried over into Thursday, along with severe heat inthe West, were the chief causes of cash strength, sources said.

The upticks ranged from as little as about a dime at theSouthern California border to as much as about 30 cents inTransco’s Zone 6-NYC pool, but the great majority were centered oneither side of 20 cents. Northeast citygates tended to be among theday’s largest, getting an extra boost from the area starting toemerge from a bout of unusually chilly temperatures.

California’s heat wave problems seem to have eased just a weebit. The California Independent System Operator issued a PowerWatch (asking voluntary electricity conservation), and that seemedto have things under control for a while. But then PG&E againwas ordered to curtail power during the afternoon to industrialcustomers willing to be curtailed in return for lower rates.However, as of Thursday afternoon there were no reports of rollingblackouts that had become necessary late Wednesday in the SanFrancisco Bay area. That was despite Cal-ISO saying thatunavailable generating capacity in the Bay area had increased from488 MW Wednesday to 800 MW Thursday.

Some of Wednesday’s problem was attributed to outages ofgas-fired units, reportedly the 739-MW Unit 6 at the Moss Landingplant near Monterey and the 325-MW Unit 6 at the Pittsburg plantnear San Francisco. One trader said the Pittsburg unit had beendown since March for a spring overhaul, but he heard the MossLanding unit had returned to service. However, the Moss Landinghearsay seemed contradicted by the Cal-ISO statement above.

A large marketer was finding relatively little load in Texas dueto temperatures there, while warm, being not at their usual levelsin the 90s at this time of year. That normally would tend todepress Waha pricing, he said, but the gas demand for airconditioning in California and east-of-California markets prompteda lot of Waha gas to head westward, propping prices up.

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