Deja

It’s deja vu all over again at El Paso Corp., with two major proxy advisory firms recommending this week that shareholders fire the company’s auditor, replace the chief financial officer, and withhold votes against some of the directors. The annual shareholder meeting is set for Nov. 18 in Houston.

Deja vu? Similar to last Monday’s market, rising cash prices Friday derived much of their support from previous-day futures strength. They certainly weren’t getting much benefit from weather fundamentals. Although high temperatures in the 90s and above continued to reign from the western Gulf Coast through the Midcontinent, desert Southwest and Rockies into parts of the Upper Plains, those conditions were largely unchanged from Thursday. The key Midwest and Northeast market areas remain unusually mild for early August.

Was it a case of deja vu? Friday’s market was close to a carbon copy of the day before. Sizeable declines in the Northeast and plunges in San Juan Basin and the Rockies mingled with moderate upticks at nearly all other points. The gains were around a dime or less in a majority of cases.

Thursday, it was deja vu all over again for both majors and independents reporting fourth quarter earnings. For the majors, Phillips Petroleum Co. and its merger partner Conoco both reported earnings declines for the final quarter of the year, while independent Houston Exploration Co. also saw earnings fall despite record production figures.

With the weather heating up and power alerts being declared, Monday marked another day of heavy duty political rallies and advertising blitzes in California even though this is an off year for elections as Gov. Gray Davis and Southern California Edison Co. sought to inject a grass root’s element to their separate conservation and state legislative campaigns.

Pardon the cash market if it was getting that old sensation ofdeja vu Wednesday. In an almost exact repeat of a week earlier,prices were rising somewhere in the vicinity of a dime in mostcases; but once again the screen took a dive following theafternoon storage report, prompting sources to predict today’strading will emulate the double-digit declines of last Thursday.

Some traders were getting a sense of deja vu all over again(thanks, Yogi Berra) as a second straight week started withdouble-digit price increases nearly across the board. The biggestgains on either side of 20 cents were concentrated at Northeastcitygates. Despite forecasts of snow and cold weather in theRockies, several increases of about a dime were experienced bypipes there. And although its rise of a little over a dime wasamong the day’s smaller ones, the PG&E citygate topped all U.S.pricing with quotes solidly in the $3.30s.