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The cash market once again displayed amazing resilience in achieving increases — most of them fairly substantial — at all points Friday. In doing so, it swam against the negative tide of milder weather returning to key northern market areas, prior-day screen weakness, a highly bearish storage situation and the usual decline of industrial load over a weekend.

Warren Buffett’s appetite for energy assets displayed itself again last week as his MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co. reached a definitive agreement with United Kingdom-based ScottishPower to buy electric affiliate PacifiCorp for $5.1 billion in cash, plus the assumption of $4.3 billion of debt. MidAmerican already has two major interstate natural gas pipelines in addition to its midwestern utility operations.

Cash quotes fell Thursday at most points as expected, but the market displayed more resilience than some had anticipated by including a fair-sized number of flat (or a little higher in a couple of cases) locations in its overall mix.

For the second time this week Pacific Gas and Electric displayed its holiday spirit doling out $85 million in property taxes to 49 California counties in which it has utility operations. They payments, made last Friday, represent the utility’s property taxes for the period covering the last six months of 2004.

Cash prices across the board Friday displayed softness for thesecond day in a row, reflecting a moderating weather forecast forthe weekend and further into this week. Despite a small late bounceback in some markets, prices in most areas finished the dayaveraging 1 to 10 cents less than Thursday’s levels.

Unlike much of last month, when Western markets persistentlydisplayed weakness while their Eastern counterparts were rising, itis the West flexing a bit of price muscle this week. Rockies pipeswere back up into the $1.30s Tuesday after several had made a briefsojourn into sub-$1.30 territory Friday and Monday. The reason forthe rebound mystified one trader. “It’s not that cold in theregion, so go figure,” he said, adding maybe it was just a resultof the normal “tug of war” between gas buyers and sellers.

Williston Basin Interstate Pipeline (WBI), through its”surrogate” affiliate Frontier Gas Storage, has displayed a patternof preferential treatment by selling all of Frontier’s gas to itsmarketing affiliate, Prairielands Energy Marketing Inc., in anattempt to give the latter a competitive edge over non-affiliatedshippers, the pipeline’s customers charge.