Beginning

After about a year of nibbles, the Canadian industry isbeginning to bite on a new ocean transportation technology beingdevised to speed up exploitation of natural gas reserves at remotelocations, led by the country’s Atlantic reserves.

Sonat reported being notified Tuesday morning that beginningtoday, Ocean Energy will be performing maintenance that requiresshut-in of the Main Pass 153 receipt point until further notice.Sonat declared a force majeure and said it will not schedule anynominations at the point during the outage.

The market was beginning to show more signs of volatilityWednesday, although the swings weren’t quite as wide-ranging asmost of those last week. Cash numbers fell by 10-15 cents at nearlyall points but were expected to rebound again today after futurestraders treated AGA’s afternoon storage report as bullish.

Much like the beginning of February, the March aftermarket gotoff to a strong start Tuesday with swing numbers for March 1 onlytrading up from apparent index levels. Unlike last month,first-of-March prices also were generally at least a nickel or moreabove end-of-February levels.

Canadian natural gas exporters have wasted no time in takingadvantage of their new power to shop around for markets as a resultof expanded pipelines.

Canadian natural gas exporters have wasted no time in takingadvantage of their new power to shop around for markets as a resultof expanded pipelines.

For the third straight day, unseasonable weather teamed with afalling futures screen to land a knockout blow on price bulls’chins, as only a few cash points escaped losses of more than adime. A huge swath of high 60- to mid 70-degree temperatures acrossthe Rockies, Gulf Coast, Midcontinent and Northeast eradicated anywinter demand yesterday and caused traders to long for the golfcourse instead of the office. Adding fuel to the fire, forecastsare calling for similar weather for the rest of the week.

TransCanada CEO Doug Baldwin let investors know that this yearis just the beginning of the cost-cutting and asset shuffling atthe company. He said to expect $3 billion of the company’s $26billion in assets to be put on the auction block by the end of2001. That includes those assets that have been or will be soldthis year: Angus Chemical, which was bought by Dow Chemical in thethird quarter; the prior transfer of ownership in Northern Borderto TC Pipelines LP; and the company’s liquids marketing business,which is expected to be sold in the fourth quarter. He warned thereis still a lot of underperforming fat to be trimmed, and anotherso-far-unannounced collection of assets could go in the fourthquarter.

The federal government will begin accepting royalty-in-kind(RIK) for some Gulf of Mexico gas production beginning Dec. 1 inwhat will be the Minerals Management Service’s (MMS) third ongoingRIK pilot.