Eastern

Panhandle Eastern plans a maintenance outage of the 100 Line from Louisburg to Houstonia for Thursday and Friday. The Pony Express point will be unavailable for 36 hours, affecting about 75 MMcf.

Eastern prices ranged from flat to down as much as a quarter Monday, with most points registering declines between a nickel and about 15 cents. But western markets tended to rebound strongly as hot weather and higher power prices gave a boost to gas.

Texas Eastern will require the shut-in of all production upstream of the Provident City Plant on its Wilcox System in the South Texas Zone starting Tuesday due to anomaly investigations and the subsequent pipe repair needed. The work is expected to be completed sometime Saturday in order for gas flow to resume Sunday.

Denver-based MarkWest Hydrocarbon Inc. announced preliminary results for three new gas wells in which it holds interests. In eastern Michigan, the Sims 2-7 well was successfully recompleted, testing at 4.4 MMcf/d of sour gas and 400 bbl/d of condensate and natural gas liquids. The well is the second to be connected to the Au Gres gas plant, modified by MarkWest and its partners in 2000. The well is scheduled to be on production by mid-July. In western Michigan, MarkWest and its partners have made two gas discoveries. The previously drilled Victory 32, in which MarkWest owns 8.5%, successfully tested before being shut in for pipeline connection. The reef play is only a few miles from the company’s sour gas pipeline. The third well, the Victory 21, in which MarkWest holds a 14.6% interest, found a reef and is shut in awaiting equipment to complete and test the well.

Prices came out of the weekend ranging from flat to moderately higher at nearly all eastern points Monday. Much bigger increases, including triple-digit ones in California, reigned in the West, a region that was experiencing weather extremes Sunday and Monday.

Eastern Canada, New York state and New England should all have adequate electricity supplies this summer, according to a set of comprehensive reliability assessments unveiled by the Northeast Power Coordinating Council (NPCC) earlier this week, although the NPCC did raise a red flag related to New York’s ability to handle periods of extreme demand for power.

A moderate rally at eastern points Monday, combined with spikes in the Rockies and at the Southern California border, must have surprised at least a few traders who were not anticipating any respite from last week’s softness.

MCN Energy Group Inc. Friday called for a special meeting ofcommon stock shareholders to be held May 15, 2001, at 2 p.m.eastern time at MCN’s headquarters to approve the long-delayedmerger with DTE Energy Co.

As many traders had expected, the moderation of cold weather ineastern markets and the screen’s expiration-day dive were enough todrive the late-March swing market sharply lower in nearly all casesThursday. Only new increases at the Southern California border andPG&E citygate defied the overall downtrend.