Belie

The cash market continued to muddle around Monday in a generallyflat mode with a slight bias to the upside as traders tried toassess whether there was enough cold weather around to reallymatter. To Houston sources donning sweaters for possibly the firsttime this season, the answer might have seemed to be yes, but toothers it was no as they noted the abundance of available storageand the fact that only a few markets were experiencing sub-freezingtemperatures. Most points were flat to a couple of cents higher,with the declines of any size occurring at Northeast citygates(although Transco Zone 6-non NYC bucked the trend there with asmall gain). Northeast weather was rainy but not freezing.

The common stocks of some natural gas companies which alreadyhad been showing a downtrend got caught in the sinkhole that wasMonday’s cliffjumper stock market and several established new lows.There was no one explanation for the declines in the stocks of someof the hardest hit, including Coastal Corp., Consolidated NaturalGas, Dynegy, El Paso Energy and Williams. Some were pointing to thecompanies’ exposure in the international arena or to declining oil,natural gas and liquids prices for the trend.

Central Gulf of Mexico Lease Sale 169 wasn’t a record, unlikethe last few lease sales, but heavy bidding seems to indicate lowcrude oil prices have not affected the industry’s aggressivedrilling plans. The U.S. Department of the Interior’s MineralsManagement Service (MMS) reported receiving 1,188 bids on 794tracts offered Wednesday. A total of 87 companies participated inthe sale. All bids totaled nearly $1.35 billion, and high bidstotaled more than $810.4 million. Of 4,180 tracts offered, 794received bids with an average of 1.5 bids per tract. By comparison,Central Gulf Sale 166, which took place a year ago, generated morethan $824 million in high bids but on more tracts. Then, 1,032tracts received bids of 5,059 offered.