As sources had predicted a day earlier, the downturn in cashprices got even steeper Thursday, primarily due to the big futuresdrop on the previous afternoon and what was considered by many tobe a rather bearish storage report. A gradual warming trend inseveral regions was not strong enough to prompt significant newcooling load for gas.

Thursday’s declines were fairly consistent within the range of5-10 cents across all markets. The screen’s late dive Wednesday hada carryover effect even though futures dropped less than 2 centsThursday, sources said.

A western trader said most of the softening in that region wasattributable to futures weakness, but also was caused by dwindlingpower generation load. Weather remains hot in theeast-of-California markets of the desert Southwest, he said, butit’s fairly mild in California itself. In addition, the DiabloCanyon nuclear plant’s Unit 1 was nearly back up to 100% operationThursday, while Palo Verde’s Unit 3 was at approximately half powerand continuing to ramp up.

While not indicative of the entire market, weekend Kingsgatenumbers were rebounding sharply for one marketer. Planning to beout of the office today, she traded Kingsgate for today’s flow inthe mid $2.60s but was able to get almost a dime more for a weekendsale.

The spot gas market was relatively quiet again, several tradersagreed. What did cause a stir for virtually everybody was the”ILOVEYOU” computer virus that erupted Thursday morning. “It’shitting every energy company that I talked to,” said a staffer atone large marketer.

However, few gas companies seemed to have any serious problemswith the “love bug,” as it was dubbed by many informationtechnology people. Among the pipelines, El Paso appeared to be hitworst by “ILOVEYOU,” posting a bulletin board notice apologizing toshippers for delays in receiving scheduling reports because of thevirus’ impact on its e-mail server.

A spot check among other major pipeline companies and severaltrading firms found little virus hassle. Most reported that theirtech people alerted all employees early in the morning to deleteany e-mails containing “ILOVEYOU” in the subject line. A few pipeshad internal problems but none affecting external customer service.Williams said it took the entire e-mail system for its fivepipelines down for a while, but then reactivated it after staffersassured that the system was clean again.

Duke said the virus was not an issue for it at all because ituses LotusNotes for its e-mail service and “ILOVEYOU” apparentlyattacks only users of Microsoft’s Outlook program.

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