The swing market maintained an upward track Wednesday, butmomentum slowed with increases of a dime or less at most points.Sources reported little change from Tuesday in October numbers asemphasis began shifting more toward bidweek.

It was natural that cash bullishness would be fading along withscreen support, a marketer commented. There’s still no weather loadthat really matters anywhere, and two hurricanes in the Atlanticare inconsequential at this point, he said. Storage demand appearsto be about the only thing preventing a substantial price drop, heconcluded.

As if to punctuate the marketer’s point, AGA said 77 Bcf was putinto storage last week with the Consuming Region West repeating itsreturn to the plus side from the previous report. For a change thatcompared favorably with the year-ago figure and exceeded thefive-year average for the period, and thus several cash tradersexpressed puzzlement that Nymex didn’t take an immediate dive butinstead weakened only a little and then made a slight recovery. Butit shouldn’t have been so surprising, according to a largeaggregator, “because we’re still way behind on the year-on-yeargap.”

A marketer said she traded the Southern California border atessential parity in the mid to high $5.70s between packages intoPG&E and into SoCal Gas, a considerable change from previouslywhen SoCal volumes commanded a substantial premium. That suggestthat weather and other loads between the northern and southernregions of the state are evening out, she said.

With the screen settlement and storage report out of the way andarmed with the latest six- to 10-day forecast from the NationalWeather Service, many traders thought it natural to expect a fastand furious Wednesday afternoon of October business. But forwhatever reasons that didn’t happen, several agreed. “It’s hard tobelieve how slow it has been this afternoon,” one source groused.

Naturally that forced a consensus that today is going to be”the” big day for the October bidweek. Then it’s going to be prettyconfusing Friday, a marketer noted. People will be finishing up anylast-minute October deals and also trading swing separately for theSept. 30 and Oct. 1-2 periods, she said.

Hurricanes Isaac and Joyce (upgraded from a tropical storm)remained far from any land mass and non-events to the gas market.Isaac likely will never come close to land as it is expected totake a northerly turn, one forecaster said. But to a gas trader,although Isaac stands “no chance” and Joyce only a small chance,the market has a new contestant in the “which storm is going tomake it into the Gulf of Mexico” contest, referring to an area ofdisturbance in the northwestern Caribbean Sea.

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