Amid a sea of minor changes elsewhere, deliveries into theChicago and Northeast were conspicuous Wednesday with gains ofaround 15-20 cents or more. A market-area OFO issued by NGPL (seeTransportation Notes) seemed rather innocuous at first by beinglimited to 6 a.m to noon each day, but a marketer said that set offa scramble by traders to adjust their Chicago balancing situations.It also pushed up NGPL Iowa-Illinois Line quotes by more than 20cents. And quotes for Northern Natural-Ventura, where the pipelinehas had a System Overrun Limitation in effect for market zonessince before Christmas (see Daily GPI, Dec. 24), soared by asimilar amount.

Considering that another Arctic cold front was already movinginto the Midwest Wednesday, barely leaving time for the previousone to clear out, one trader thought prices might have gone muchhigher if it weren’t for the huge storage surplus. Even withweather as bad as the Chicago area has experienced lately, he said,citygates still haven’t gotten significantly over $2.50. Over thelast couple of years citygates might have hit as much as $50 undersimilar blizzard conditions if it weren’t for abundant storage, thetrader said.

Another source noted the Chicago-Michigan spread approached 30cents as NGPL’s OFO forced people to bid up the price of firm gasinto the Windy (and freezing) City. He saw Chicago numbers back offa bit around 10-10:30 a.m. CST after most buyers had fulfilledtheir needs, but then an upturn came again just before nominationsdeadline.

A marketer was dismayed when Transco Zone 6 prices continued torise. The area “is constrained, but not that constrained,” shesaid. She felt it was mainly a case of Zone 6 suppliers with firmtransport figuring they could hold out until someone was willing tomeet their price.

As an example of the peak usage generated by last week’s Midwestblizzard, Michigan Consolidated Gas reported a sendout of 2.3 BcfMonday, its largest daily delivery volume in two years. That amountis 35% above that of an average winter day, MichCon said.

Other than the Midwest and Northeast action, much of the rest ofthe market seemed rather dull in comparison. About the onlysignificant producing-area increases of a nickel to a dime occurredon Midcontinent pipes.

Cold market-area weather is partially to blame for the pricestrength, a Houston source said, but cold temperatures going allthe way into the Gulf Coast are putting the transportation systemunder a big strain. “Furthermore, the pipelines are not makingthings easy with the way they are handling the strain. They arewaffling back and forth on cuts and constraints, and you don’t knowwhat is flowing and what isn’t.”

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