Certainly

The Williams Co.’s natural gas pipeline unit is bullish on NorthAmerican development and is looking north to Canada for its nextproject.

If Y2K doesn’t bring an end to the gas and power industries, itcertainly won’t do anything to stop them from hooking up. Judgingby what’s happened so far, gas and power will never stand alooffrom one another again.

Gas buyers certainly had no complaints about “storm hype”keeping prices artificially high Tuesday. Even with one of the mostdangerous hurricanes of the century pounding the Bahamas andbearing down on the southeastern U.S., its relative lack of threatto Gulf of Mexico production did nothing to avert cash price dropsof a dime or more-sometimes much more-in nearly every market. Onlythe Northern California points (Malin and PG&E citygate)managed to keep their declines in single digits, and even they fellalmost a dime.

Ding-dong the downtrend is dead. Well maybe its not dead quiteyet, but it certainly was dealt a potentially fatal blow yesterdaywhen short-covering by funds quickly turned into a buyingfree-for-all as commercials and locals entered the fray. The Augustcontract finished at $2.395, up 14.2 cents for the day. Nearly asimpressive as the price action was estimated volume, whichregistered 113,049 contracts.

As the countdown to today’s May futures expiry continuedTuesday, swing cash prices certainly did their part to encouragethe bulls in Nymex’s trading pit. But in a form of reciprocatingsupport, sources said late-April price rises of about a dime inmost markets were based almost solely on screen upticks Monday andTuesday. Except for moderate air conditioning load in Texas and theSoutheast and a bit of lingering chill in the West, weatherfundamentals were almost non-existent, they said.

The faces in the top half of NGI’s ranking of the top 20 gasmarketers haven’t changed much but their volumes certainly have, insome cases showing substantial growth. And while only one companyjoined the top-10 for the first time in 1998, nearly every one ofthe biggest players saw its position change in the ranking.

Certainly not BP’s Browne, who offered a litany of E&ampPtechnology advances. “In real terms, oil prices today are more than40% below where they stood a decade ago and comparable to levelslast seen before the Yom Kippur War 25 years ago. The reason we’reall still in business is that average finding, development andlifting costs have all fallen – on average by almost a third inreal terms over the last decade.”