Climbed

For the fifth week in a row, natural gas futures climbed higheron Friday, as traders loaded up on a little bit of storm insuranceahead of the weekend. Their fear, whether warranted or not, is thatthe market will spike higher Monday morning on the news that a fullscale hurricane is bearing down on gas production assets in theGulf of Mexico. And while it seemed a very unlikely event as ofpress time Friday, it was enough to promote the September contractup 3 cents to $4.436 in a very quiet session.

Gas futures climbed to their second highest settlement ever onFriday and appear poised to make that final push this week to theplace where no near-month contract has gone before. What will lifebe like if near-month futures rise above $4.60 (or $4.62, if youuse the prior Nymex Access high of December 1996)?

Feeding off gains notched during the Wednesday evening Accesssession, the futures market climbed higher yesterday as traderscovered shorts positions created during the recent dip. However,after failing to punch through resistance at $2.70 early, theNovember contract slipped in the afternoon before finishing at$2.642, a 4.1-cent advance on the day.

After slipping 2.5 cents Tuesday, the May natural gas futurescontract climbed back up to just below stubborn support at $2.19yesterday in tenuous trading ahead of the release of the AmericanGas Association (AGA) storage report. May finished the session up 3cents to $2.174.