Caused

A lightning strike Monday night at PG&E GasTransmission-Northwest’s Station 13 (Chemult, OR) caused ashortfall in receipts, but PG&E GT-NW said it worked with NOVAto correct respective linepacks under an Operational BalancingAgreement and thus did not expect any impact on Tuesday’s scheduledvolumes. However, it was unable to schedule any increased receiptsat Kingsgate or additional deliveries through Station 13 Tuesday.

NOVA restored its 16-inch Josephine Lateral in northwest Albertato service Saturday evening following a rupture caused bythird-party construction. The outage was isolated to a 7-kilometersection of the NPS 16 Josephine Lateral Loop about 30 kilometersnorth of Saddle Hills Compressor Station, NOVA said. The pipelinechanged its daily system imbalance tolerance to -2/+18% due to lowlinepack Saturday morning.

Houston-based Kimball Trading and Kimball Trading Canada ofCalgary, two of the Kimball Companies, last week filed for Chapter11 bankruptcy protection in Houston. The move caused marketrepercussions last Thursday, the day after the filing, as Kimballhalted gas flows to customers. The bankruptcy filings do notinvolve the related Kimball Resources or the other KimballCompanies.

Uncertainty over the treatment of municipal aggregation in NewJersey’s energy deregulation legislation caused the state’srestructuring bill to be bounced back and forth several times lastweek between the general assembly and senate, resulting in at leasta two-week delay before a final decision. The restructuring billprovides strict deadlines of Aug. 1 for statewide electric utilitygeneration unbundling, and Dec. 31 for statewide gas utility supplyunbundling. It is being reviewed by the assembly at the presenttime, and the next available voting session will take place Jan.28.

All the gas flowing to the Florida peninsula was cut off overthe weekend after a lightning strike Friday afternoon caused a fireand pipe rupture at Florida Gas Transmission’s Station 15 nearPerry, FL, and knocked out all downstream service. The 24-inch,30-inch and 36-inch mainlines that converge in the station yardwere affected.

In what has become almost routine lately, the AGA’s report ofstrong injections into storage caused a wave of follow-throughselling Thursday. A lower open allowed the contract to slip beneathsupport to settle at $2.02. In doing so, the July contract fell anadditional 8.6 cents to settle at the contract’s lowest point since1997.

The June Nymex contract caused quite a bit of excitement onFriday, as the spot month teased both the bears and the bulls. Juneraised the eyebrows of bearish traders when the contractmomentarily reached a low of $1.99, but strong short coveringkicked in at that point, enough to drive the spot month to itsfinal settlement price of $2.094.

Warmer-than-normal weather caused Columbia Energy Group toreport first-quarter 1998 net income down from the same period lastyear. Results in the company’s marketing business were off sharplydue mainly to expenses.