Defying

Defying the predictions of political pundits, the Republican-led House yesterday passed landmark energy legislation that gives small producers multi-billion dollar tax breaks and lays the foundation for oil and natural gas exploration and production to begin in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) within the next decade. The House bill was a major victory for President Bush, who has backed drilling in ANWR as part of his national energy policy.

Defying the conventional wisdom that lower gas demand over aweekend usually causes softer prices, cash prices put on a show ofstrength Friday with nearly all points rising by a nickel or more.An increase of less than a penny in the Henry Hub futures contractprovided little support for the cash market, so sources concludedit must have been the residual effect from Thursday’s screen run-upof nearly a dime that helped push up cash quotes Friday.

Incremental prices closed out the month of January once againdefying bearish demand factors. In deals done Friday, most averagesvaried little from their Thursday positions. And though traderswere separating weekend business into Saturday/Sunday andMonday-only deals due to the shift from January to February, theyreported little appreciable difference in pricing between the twotime periods.

The cash market capped off a week of defying expectations ofsoftness with a little bit of softness, but Friday’s small dropsonce again surprised traders by failing to fall as much as expectedfor a lower-load weekend period. Sources continued to marvel at therelative firmness of prices in the absence of significant heatingload and with the abundance of storage supplies.

The cash market lost some ground Tuesday, again defying sources’pre-holiday expectations of a rebound from last Thursday’s pricerout. Except for PG&E citygates and intra-Alberta-each upalmost a nickel into the high $2.20s and low C$2.00srespectively-and small gains at a couple of other scattered points,quotes registered as flat to down 5-7 cents.