Depressing

Mild weather throughout most of the North American continent continued to work its price-depressing magic Friday, augmented by day-earlier weakness in energy futures and to a lesser extent by the typical slump of industrial load over a weekend.

Prices failed to maintain the upward momentum that had begun theweek, slipping lower by a nickel to a dime at nearly all pointsTuesday. Traders were unable to ignore the cumulative negativedemand effect of more than 40 cities setting all-time hightemperature records for the month of November over the previousweek. And although one marketer said the screen had little bearingon day-to-day cash pricing, the nickel-plus drop in futuresprovided no support for cash.

Unlike a week earlier, the slump in gas demand that almostalways accompanies a weekend had its usual negative effect on cashprices Friday. Declines ranged from only 3-4 cents at Midwest andNortheast citygates to as much as a dime or so at Southwest andRockies points, where most of the maintenance outages at processingplants and compressor stations had ended by Friday. Most otherpoints registered drops of about a nickel.