The cash market capped off a week of defying expectations ofsoftness with a little bit of softness, but Friday’s small dropsonce again surprised traders by failing to fall as much as expectedfor a lower-load weekend period. Sources continued to marvel at therelative firmness of prices in the absence of significant heatingload and with the abundance of storage supplies.

Many of the price losses were minuscule at 3 cents or less, witha few points registering as flat. Michigan citygates and FloridaGas-Louisiana were joined by El Paso-San Juan (Bondad) among thefew markets down by as much as a nickel. A Gulf Coast trader saidprices tended to back off as his first Texas Eastern-East LA dealat $1.81 was followed by two more a nickel lower.

“Nobody can explain [last] week’s market,” said an Oklahomasource who expects “following the screen” to influence quite a bitof this week’s activity. She noted that much of Friday’s Nymexfutures decline of nearly a dime came too late to have an impact oncash prices.

A Midcontinent marketer suggested cash numbers may have beenunusually firm last week because of month-end balancing.”Industrials who have held off all month in hopes of even lowerprices are now coming to the realization that there may not be any.As a result, what would have been a small buyer all month now hasto step up and buy 15-20 MMcf/d or so to make up the imbalance,”the marketer said.

A Houston-based source thinks this week’s market tone will beset today when substantially colder weather should be entering thenation’s midsection. However, he expects a bearish storage reportWednesday afternoon due to the lightness of last week’s demand. Hereported trying to do some February business Friday but couldn’tfind any takers.

A Chicago-area end-user likes his position going into bidweek.”I am in the comfortable situation of being a buyer in a marketwith ample storage and relatively benign weather.” Because of that,he said, “it will take $1.75 Chicago baseload offers to get me tobuy. Otherwise I will sit on my hands and let the market come to mein the February aftermarket.”

A marketer had little doubt that the end-user might get his$1.75-area Chicago citygates. February will be decidedly differentfrom January with warming weather and a pressing need to liquidatestorage, he said. But he thought the biggest negative factor forFebruary pricing would be the difference in Western heating demand.In early January the West was cold and pulling gas that otherwisemight have made its way to Chicago via Northern Border, themarketer said. Now the West has warmed up and he expects more gasthere to be flowing to Chicago.

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