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The bears were at it again at the New York Mercantile ExchangeWednesday when follow-through selling on the heels of Tuesday’sprecipitous price falloff took prices lower. The prompt Januarycontract gapped lower at the open and never looked back, posting a6.6-cent loss to $1.847 for the session.

Lack of follow-through selling kept the bears guessing yesterdayat Nymex as the market ignored a trio of bearish factors-weather,storage, and cash prices-to trade nearly unchanged on the day. TheNovember contract was limited to a tight trading range and settleddown just 0.4 cents to $2.176 for the day. Estimated volume was43,394.

Fort Worth-based Richardson Products Co., the marketing arm ofSid Richardson Gasoline Co., is hoping to follow the footsteps ofAquila Gas Pipeline (AQP) of San Antonio, TX, into third-party gasmarketing. The company picked up four AQP employees to accomplishits goal.

Fort Worth-based Richardson Products Co., the marketing arm ofSid Richardson Gasoline Co., is hoping to follow the footsteps ofAquila Gas Pipeline of San Antonio, TX, into third-party gasmarketing. The company is expanding into marketing of third-partynatural gas and adding risk management products. RichardsonProducts recently grew its staff by five, four of whom come fromAquila Gas Pipeline where they started a successful third-partymarketing business. Richardson Products last year marketed 100 to130 MMcf/d of gas last year. Jim Wade, newly hired vice presidentof marketing and business development, said plans are to initiallydouble that number and then market about half a Bcf/d in the firstquarter of next year, all physical gas. Expectations are for abouta Bcf/d in financial volumes.

For a change the cash market demonstrated some independence fromthe futures screen influence Wednesday. Even as futures followedTuesday’s downtick of nearly 6 cents with an even bigger diveyesterday, quotes at nearly all non-Western points either held flator managed to tack on up to 3-4 cents. This ran contrary to what anumber of traders had expected.

Follow-through on the heels of last Friday’s positive tradingsession prompted some mild short covering which bolstered futuresfor the second Monday in a row. The September contract was thebiggest mover, posting a 6.2 cent gain to settle at 1.895 on theday.

The futures market continued to receive strong technicalfollow-through buying on Monday, adding to gains posted last weekthat some analysts feel could be signaling the end to the two-monthdowntrend in natural gas prices.

Follow-through buying took hold of Nymex trading early, and ledto new session highs before the closing bell last Friday as Julygained 9.9 cents to settle at $2.17. July gapped higher on the openafter coming into the day with solid momentum following Thursday’smodest gains in both the regular and ACCESS trading session. Julyopened at 2.115 Friday, already 4.4 cents above Thursday’s settle.A warming trend for both the weekend and extending into the 6-10day forecast in the South, coupled with some technical momentumwere universally cited as reasons for the strength.

Cash price quotes again put on their stuck-in-cement actWednesday as flatness remained the common denominator among mostmarkets. But snowy conditions in the Rockies couldn’t keep mostof the region’s pipes from softening into the mid $1.90s.Denver-Julesburg Basin gas into CIG yielded about the only Rockiesquotes still above $2. A Denver-area trading firm reportedly closedits offices early Wednesday because of the snowstorm, as did manyColorado schools.