Generally

This week’s bull market did come to an end Thursday as generallyexpected, but there was only a slight amount of price retrenchmentprimarily because of a show of strength by January futures. Eventhough cash traders were starting to discount the most recent coldweather forecasts, people in the Nymex pit apparently were stillgiving them credence. Most points were flat to 2-3 cents down, withseveral scattered ones achieving small gains. Only a few pointsfell by as much as a nickel or so.

A Williams Gas Pipeline executive last week broke ranks with theinterstate pipeline industry’s generally undivided support forstraight-fixed variable (SFV) rate design, advocating instead amove to a volumetric design. He believes such a rate design will beessential for gas pipelines to meet the needs of power generators,and for the industry as a whole to reach its goal of a 30 Tcfmarket

Tuesday’s trading appeared to bear out one Daily GPI source’spredictions Monday of generally stagnant pricing for the rest ofthis week. Eastern numbers formed almost a mirror image of theprevious day’s pattern. Instead of being flat to a little higher,they were flat to a little lower. And prices in the West, which hadbeen busy recovering lost weekend ground Monday, joined inTuesday’s overall flat-to-lower trend with the exception of smallgains at the PG&E citygate and a couple of Rockies locations.

Swing gas for today-only flow generally was down a little fromlate-bidweek levels, but not in all cases. In fact, a Sumas traderfound his swing quotes running up to a nickel more than his Julybaseload deals. And even at the points where there were slightretreats, sources still viewed the aftermarket as starting offfairly strong. Despite a stagnant August screen Wednesday, the samething that caused end-of-June and late-bidweek run-ups was creditedfor the swing strength: oppressive heat almost everywhere that hadpower plants straining to handle the air conditioning load.

Devon Energy Corp. and PennzEnergy Co. announced plans to mergeyesterday. While the deal was generally cheered by analysts, somecriticized PennzEnergy Chairman James L. Pate for letting thecompany go too cheaply without considering other options. Theannouncement also raised the hackles of PennzEnergy investors.

While eastern markets meandered around in a generally flatperformance Monday, the West was achieving significant gains ofabout a nickel or more. Topping the list was San Juan Basin, wheresupply outages helped drive quotes up by about 15 cents. Prices inthe Rockies, Pacific Northwest and western Canada also were strongdue to cold weather. It snowed in Calgary Monday morning, onesource said, adding this is late in the season for snow but not arecord for Calgary.

Although generally moving a little bit below index levels, theinitial February aftermarket proved stronger Monday than manytraders were expecting. Several points managed to stay flat toindex. Considering how little weather demand there was in majormarket areas and the difficulty some suppliers reported inscrounging up buyers, it was surprising how little price erosionthere was, a Texas marketer said.

Due to one of the largest storage systems in the country andgenerally low gas prices, East Ohio Gas said Monday that itscustomers will achieve 16% in gas cost savings over the next threemonths compared to the same time last year. Officials for theutility said that its customers will be charged a rate of $3.28 perMcf for the next three months, compared to $3.89 Mcf over the sameperiod in 1998.

The recent rash of producer spending cuts (see related story)comes at a time when the message on prices from the analystcommunity is pretty gloomy, too. “There’s not much holding [gasprices] up,” said Thomas J. Woods, Ziff Energy vice president forU.S. Gas Services. Woods said Ziff has been warning its clientsthat current prices are not supportable. “We had put out some earlywarnings in July when prices first frayed, and we said that therewas a very significant possibility that this would go [on].”