Daily

Despite his promise to the gas industry last year that he wouldn’t change the Pipeline Safety Act of 1995 (see Daily GPI, March 19, 1999), Congressman Bob Franks (R-NJ), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee — who also is running for a Senate seat in his home state — introduced a bill last week that would do just that. His legislation joined a growing stack of pipeline safety bills that have been introduced this session.

As sources had predicted (see Daily GPI, July 14), the weekendmarket was divided along geographical lines. Eastern quotes were upby around a nickel to a little more than a dime in most cases,while the majority of western points registered declines rangingfrom slightly less than a dime to 20 cents or more.

After etching out its daily trading range during the first 45minutes Friday, natural gas futures limped lazily sideways for therest of the session, as traders elected to stay mostly on thesidelines ahead of the 4-day holiday weekend. The August contractfinished 5.3 cents stronger at $4.476 in a session that saw lessthan 40,000 contracts change hands.

To curb growing linepack, NOVA changed its daily imbalancetolerance range to +2%/-18% at noon Tuesday.

The natural gas futures market had one of its more volatileweeks last week as daily price fluctuations averaged more than 20cents and price ranges averaged a substantial 28 cents. As ofFriday afternoon, the July contract stood at a lofty perch of$4.160/MMBtu, 11.7 cents higher than the previous Friday and 94.3cents above where the near-month contract stood one month earlier.

Denver’s Tom Brown Inc. paid $16.2 million for an estimated 22Bcf of gas equivalent in reserves, with current net dailyproduction of 8 MMcf of equivalent gas in the Rocky Mountainregion’s Pavillion field. The transaction by the independent energycompany increases its working interest in the Pavillion to 90%, upfrom a previous 50% interest.

Despite a substantial 16-cent range, the futures market postedits smallest daily move of the entire week on Friday with July onlymanaging a 2.7 cent gain to end the regular trading session at$4.160. August rose 3.5 cents to $4.140. The 12-month strip inchedup to $3.938.

Problems with the Blanco Plant’s D1 turbine (see Daily GPI, June 8) were not as severe as anticipated,El Paso said, and thus it was being returned to service Friday alongwith the rest of the plant instead of remaining down through Sunday aspreviously estimated.

Florida Gas Transmission issued an Overage Alert Day noticeWednesday, effective until further notice. The 2% tolerance fornegative daily imbalances is considerably more stringent than thosein OAD notices earlier this month.