Despite

Despite a trend toward milder weather in virtually all regions,the great majority of the swing market was seeing flat to slightlyhigher prices Wednesday. Considering the weather and little supportfrom a moderately higher Nymex screen, it must have been cash-outprices that kept late-December quotes from continuing to fall, onesource suggested.

NiSource Inc. has extended its $74/share ($6.1 billion) tenderoffer for all of the outstanding common stock of Columbia Energyuntil midnight EST on Feb. 11. despite seeing little change in thenumber of shares tendered or the reaction of Columbia since itraised its offer in October. It said that so far Columbiashareholders have tendered 49,645,081 shares, or about 61% of allColumbia’s outstanding stock. Columbia’s management has repeatedlyrejected a merger with NiSource, and currently is evaluating alloptions, including a sale of all or part of the company.

Despite warming temperatures, both forecasted and actual, thenatural gas market posted its second day of gains Thursday in atechnically driven trading session. After a strong open, theDecember contract received a boost from short covering by tradersbetting that the market may have reached a short-term bottom in thelow $2.40s. The prompt month finished at $2.496, up 4 cents on theday.

Despite its claims otherwise, Northern Border Pipeline’sproposed Project 2000 expansion/extension will have a significant”negative impact” on Natural Gas Pipeline Co. of America (NGPL),both on a system-wide basis and on its deliveries to North Hayden,IN, the Kinder Morgan pipeline said.

With its seemingly bottomless stomach rumbling again, EnergyEast bought Berkshire Energy Resources for $96 million last week inan attempt to complement its growth strategy and gain new gascustomers in western Massachusetts. The companies said they expectto complete the transaction within 12 months. As part of the deal,Energy East also assumed $40 million of Berkshire’s preferred stockand long-term debt.

Despite a leveling off of the general cash market Thursday, inno way did it signify that the recent price slide was coming to anend, sources said. Instead, there was a consensus that weekendnumbers will be performing an ugly swan dive today. Chiefly therewill be the influence of Thursday’s dime-plus screen drop, whichoccurred for the most part after cash business had been completed,several traders said. In addition, quite a few pipelines eitherhave high-linepack OFOs already in place or are expected to issuethem today as storage injection capabilities are highly constrainedon nearly every system. And although it was getting decidedlychillier Thursday in the Midwest and Northeast market areas, theweather still wasn’t cold enough to generate any great amount ofheating load.

With its seemingly bottomless stomach rumbling again, EnergyEast bought Berkshire Energy Resources for $96 million yesterday asa complement to its growth strategy and to gain new gas customersin western Massachusetts. The companies said they expect tocomplete the transaction within 12 months. As part of the deal,Energy East also assumed $40 million of Berkshire’s preferred stockand long-term debt.

After a July power price spike forced it to default on severalsales agreements with marketers and led to a $73 million net lossthat month, Cinergy Corp. seriously considered quitting the supplybusiness altogether (See NGI Aug. 9, Aug. 11). But CEO James E.Rogers said last week the company’s board of directors hasunanimously decided Cinergy should stick with it as the industrymoves to a competitive environment.

After notching gains in both the regular and Access tradingsessions Wednesday, the futures market sank again yesterday asbulls battled with an increasingly negative technical picture andunsupportive weather outlooks. Within an hour of its $2.895 open,the December contract had already slipped a nickel lower. From thatpoint it continued to chop lower for the rest of the session,finishing down 4.7 cents at $2.826.