Defies

Except for continued rises at some Northeast citygates, most ofthe cash market was in rout mode Wednesday. Price decreases of adime or more-much more in a few cases-prevailed at nearly allpoints despite cold weather blanketing much of the U.S. from theRockies eastward. A falling screen and forecasts that some areaswill be warming up this weekend constituted the main cashdepressants, sources said. Despite what one trader called a “ratherhealthy” AGA figure of 116 Bcf withdrawn from storage last week,few saw much chance of a holiday weekend rebound.

Even with continuing mild weather and an indifferent screen, theEast joined the West in a united front of rising prices Wednesday.Gains were fairly uniform across the board, ranging from about anickel to a dime. CIG, which had been lagging considerably behindother Rockies pipes Tuesday, was playing catch-up Wednesday with anincrease of a little more than a dime after an eastward-moving coldfront blanketed much of the state of Colorado in snow.

Between winter weather that finally was starting to moderate forreal and the normal load decline associated with a holiday weekend,most traders were confident that Friday’s cash market would befalling substantially. Imagine their surprise at an overall flatperformance that even included modest upticks at a few Gulf Coastpoints