Chose

After dropping 18.1 cents on Monday, the natural gas futures prompt month on Tuesday chose to follow crude’s lead and probe the upside. With only a few days left until expiration, the July contract notched a 7.3-cent gain to close at $6.412. Action was light Tuesday, as 52,035 contracts changed hands.

Confounded by seemingly contradictory weather forecasts, natural gas futures traders chose to side with what they knew Monday as they pressured the market lower in sympathy with bearish supply news issued last week. February futures finished at $5.727, down 33.2 cents for the day.

Ignoring a general lack of hot weather fundamentals, cash traders chose instead to concentrate on other factors in sending prices skyrocketing by 20-50 cents amid huge volatility Thursday. The key market stimulants were AGA’s report of a shockingly low 3 Bcf storage injection last week, which had been met by widespread skepticism; the screen’s corresponding spike Wednesday afternoon (although futures were softer Thursday morning); and the rapid development and speed of Tropical Storm Chantal in the Atlantic.

Watertown Municipal Utilities chose Tenaska Marketing Venturesof Omaha, NB, to be its gas transportation and fuel manager for thenext five years. Watertown will buy about 8 Bcf of gas from Tenaskaover the contract term. The utility recently finished constructinga five-mile pipeline directly connecting it to Northern BorderPipeline. Previously, the utility moved gas on Northern Natural.Thecombined gas, electric and water utility serves about 20,000 innortheast South Dakota.

After testing both the upside and the downside during the firsthour of trading, the futures market chose the middle road yesterdayas many traders waited on the sidelines ahead of the weekly storagereport. As a result, the November contract did not stray very farfrom center and finished the session up 1.5 cents at $2.601.

The Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) of GreaterTucson, AZ, chose New Energy Ventures as the energy serviceprovider for its members with the goal of lowering members’electricity costs.

Enron Capital & Trade Resources Corp. (ECT) chose IONATechnologies’ Orbix and OrbixTalk products for real-time energytrading. The new trading system, which enables Enron traders tocapture and process complex deals, currently supports natural gastrading and later will be extended to support electricity and otherenergy commodities. ECT’s trading system, called Sitara, alsoallows traders to perform real-time portfolio and positionmanagement. The new system has been deployed in Houston and will bedeployed worldwide.