Avert

Spurred by Friday’s screen drop of more than a quarter and generally milder weather trends, prices dropped across the board Monday. The Northeast, despite facing a new winter storm late Monday that would continue through Tuesday, again led the market’s downhill trek with declines of around a dollar or greater.

Losses of 30 cents or more at a couple of Northeast citygates topped overall softness in pricing Friday. Colder weather trends in some areas obviously didn’t perk up demand enough to overcome mild conditions in much of the East, the residual drag of Thursday’s 12-cent screen drop and the typical slump in industrial load over a weekend.

Rising air conditioning load across the South was insufficient to avert modest to sizeable price declines at nearly all points Wednesday. Flat Southern California border and Transwestern Permian numbers were the exception to declines ranging from about a nickel to about 30 cents in the rest of the market.

The December aftermarket was launched on a moderately weak note Wednesday, with quotes for the first and second falling several cents below both end-of-November swing levels and monthly indexes in nearly all cases. The Rockies and California held up most strongly, ranging from flat to a few pennies higher and lower.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission demonstrated “a shocking absence of regulatory vigilance,” and failed to restructure itself to oversee a competitive market, according to a memorandum produced by Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman’s (CT) Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs. The report attempts to place at least part of the blame for the Enron debacle at FERC’s door.

Despite a substantial amount of near-winter weather lingering in the Midwest and Northeast market areas, softer cash prices Wednesday showed conclusively that the early-week rally had run out of steam. A few scattered points were flat to barely lower, but otherwise losses ranged up to about 30 cents at the PG&E citygate. Most decreases were around a dime or less, however.

Not even a burst of activity in what has so far been a quiet 2002 Atlantic hurricane season was able to support prices Monday. Except for mild upticks in California and the holiday-limited intra-Alberta market, along with a smidgen of flatness in the Northeast, most points fell between about a nickel and 30 cents. The larger declines tended to cluster in the Rockies, but Transco Zone 6-New York City continued to descend from last week’s stratospheric heights with a plunge of more than 40 cents to land it back in place with other Northeast quotes in the $3.20s.

The cash market paid little heed Wednesday to a winter storm moving into the Southeast and bringing snow to areas that rarely ever see the white stuff. Instead, it concentrated on the futures declines of Monday and yesterday, and the increasing switch to using storage in lieu of buying new supplies, in sending prices down by double-digit amounts at nearly all points.

The cash market ignored the preview of winter that was expectedto permeate nearly all U.S. weather over the weekend, insteadfocusing on another dime-plus screen dive and the fact that thechill is likely to be short-lived and was displacing cooling loadin the South. The result was widely varied price drops betweenabout a nickel and nearly 50 cents Friday.