Generally

Prices were still moving higher in most cases Tuesday, but generally at a slower pace than on the day before. Markets as disparate as citygates in Florida and the Northeast, San Juan Basin and the Pacific Northwest/Western Canada were still seeing double-digit gains of up to about a quarter, with Algonquin citygates averaging a little more than $5. But a majority of points ranged from flat to up about a dime, with gains of a nickel or less prevalent.

The September aftermarket got launched on a generally softening note Friday. Most points fell between about a nickel and a quarter from end-of-August levels, and also started out anywhere from about 15 cents to more than 50 cents below their first-of-month indexes. (Trading was done for the Sunday-Tuesday period since deals had been cut on Thursday for the last two days of August.)

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s Division of Regulatory Audits last week began an industry-wide audit of annual financial reports to determine why such a high number of jurisdictional natural gas and electricity companies reported negative balances in their asset (cash) accounts pertaining to subsidiary investments for 2001.

In some respects the cash market was all over the place Monday, but for the most part the trend was flat to only a few cents higher. The major exceptions on the plus side were gains of about a dime or more for the Columbia-Appalachia (TCO), intra-Alberta, Northern California and San Juan-Bondad markets. But as expected, Rockies prices got hammered by a major outage on Northwest Pipeline.

A moderate amount of strength in the Rockies was the major exception Wednesday to a generally mixed bag of prices. Non-Rockies numbers were mostly flat but also ranged up to about a nickel higher or lower in some cases. Transco Zone 6-NYC took the only big fall of a little more than 50 cents.

Prices fell about 10-20 cents across the board Thursday in what traders generally considered as “reality” catching up with the gas market. But one producer is expecting at least a mild rally today after the screen turned a negative morning into an afternoon settlement that was a little more than a nickel higher.

The market was “kind of back to normal,” as one trader expressed it, Wednesday following the fundamentals-defying firmness of the previous day. Bowing to the unseasonably mild temperatures dominating all regions (Florida remained something of an exception), prices fell by about a dime or less at a majority of points.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Wednesday generally re-affirmed key earlier decisions on price mitigation measures for California and the West, making minor modifications in a sweeping clean-up order encompassing a number of dockets in its year-and-a-half long battle to subdue the western power crisis.

Generally weak fundamentals notwithstanding, for the most part the cash market Thursday continued to resist the bearishness that many believe is its proper destiny. For a second straight day, quotes at eastern points were a mix of flat to slightly up or down, with small declines prevalent again. However, most of the West registered larger downturns due to California LDC OFOs, although many of the drops outside the Rockies were less than a dime.