Days

As California suffered through two consecutive days of daytime darkness last week, FERC regulators remained as divided as ever over whether to impose price caps on wholesale power sales in the West to help alleviate the continuing crisis.

The Pascagoula (MS) Gas Plant has informed Destin Pipeline thattwo to three days of maintenance is tentatively planned to begin atthe plant on April 30 and it expected to require shutting in boththe plant and pipeline during that period. The two entities areworking together to minimize the duration of the shut-in, with theplant using last week’s downtime to initiate some of the workoriginally expected to occur during the April shut-in.

After beginning the post-Thanksgiving week with two days ofsoftness, the cash market got back on a firming track Wednesday intrading for the last day of November. The upticks were fairlymoderate overall, ranging from slightly down at a few scatteredpoints to Northeast gains in the teens.

After trading within a wide, 58-cent trading range over the past10 trading days, November futures could barely eke out a nickelrange during the regular open-outcry session Tuesday, as traderselected to remain mostly on the sidelines ahead of fresh weatherand storage news expected this afternoon. The prompt month finisheddown 1.6 cents at $5.134 in a session that saw a scant 48,674contracts change hands.

Aside from the political cries for regulatory actions to provideconsumer electricity rate relief, two days of federal hearingsMonday and Tuesday turned up a wide array of diagnoses andpotential prescriptions for curing what ails California’sstill-convalescing wholesale power market.

Led by local buying, natural gas futures spiked higher for thesecond time in three days Wednesday as traders positionedthemselves on the long side of the market, ahead of the release offresh hurricane and storage news. However, after posting a $4.79high minutes after 2:00 p.m. (EST), the September contract waspressured lower throughout the last hour of trading as locals tookprofits on their long holdings. The prompt month finished up 8.5cents at $4.605, near the lower end of Wednesday’s trading range.

El Paso canceled an Unauthorized Overpull Penalty alert Thursdayafter it had been in effect for two days.(see Daily GPI, Aug. 16).

Breaking its string of days with advances at nine, the naturalgas futures market sifted lower yesterday as traders learned that atropical storm they had been watching on Friday would likely not bea threat to gas production in the Gulf of Mexico. The prompt monthtook the news on the chin, tumbling 15.7 cents to finish at $4.318.Estimated volume confirmed the move, with 37,472 contracts changinghands.

Swing quotes for the first five days of July saw little changefrom end-of-June numbers in most cases and were stronger at somepoints. However, the July aftermarket did begin at levels downconsiderably from indexes.