Goes

DTE Energy, Detroit Edison’s parent company, said last week itis in the market to acquire a natural gas supplier. The company isin exploratory stages right now but hopes to have some kind ofagreement by the end of this year, a DTE official said at thecompany’s annual meeting.

After a convincing 7-cent gain to kick off the week, the futuresmarket forged higher yesterday morning amid continuedshort-covering mixed with some fresh buying activity. The Aprilcontract was bumping up against the March 12 high of $1.825 inmid-day trading, but in the afternoon the buying dried up, leavingonly sellers to determine the market direction. The resulting priceslide-7 cents in 45 minutes-send the prompt month spiraling lowerto finish at $1.754.

“It just goes to show you. This gas market doesn’t make muchsense,” a marketer said. Her comment reflected the chagrin of manytraders Thursday when late-January cash prices tended to firm by upto a nickel instead of falling as generally expected. Most sourceshad been sure Wednesday that the anemic storage withdrawal figurereported by AGA (92 Bcf) would lead to cash softness. Sourcesprofessed to have no clue as to what was propping up prices in theface of no fundamental support, although one suggested the strongFebruary futures close might have given cash a psychological boost.

With incentives to ink a national contract later in the year,Sempra Energy Solutions has announced a “multi-million-dollar,one-year” energy services contract for the California operations ofPETCO Animal Supplies Inc., one of the leading national pet foodand supplies retailers with about $750 million in annual revenues(1997). Both Sempra and PETCO are headquartered in San Diego. Nationally, PETCO’s annual electricity bill alone exceeds $10million, according to Ken Moss, energy manager for the pet supplychain, which is rapidly expanding with new, larger(15,000-square-foot) retail outlets that now cover 36 states, withenergy coming from more than 100 different gas and electricdistribution utilities. Natural gas nationally accounts for about10% of the chain’s annual energy load. Water is a much smallerportion, Moss said.

Bombing Iraq seemed as reasonable an explanation as any for whymost cash markets were rising in the neighborhood of a dimeWednesday. Weather was getting a little colder but still relativelymild for this time of year, so it’s not like there’s any big surgein gas demand, a marketer said. The AGA storage report of 49 Bcf inwithdrawals last week, which came too late to affect Wednesday’strading, was approximately in the middle of most expectations andthus neither bearish nor bullish.

For the second week in a row, the futures market was unable tobuild on advances posted early in the week, and after the Septembercontract flirted with, but did not break through resistanceTuesday, again came under significant selling pressure that leftthe prompt month down 8.3 cents to settle at $1.812.

A week after rival QuickTrade launched its new electronic powertrading system, Altra Energy Technologies followed suit withStreamlineT for Power, a real-time trading system for wholesaleelectricity. The two systems arrived on the market during atumultuous period, in which skyrocketing power prices forcedseveral marketers to default and many others to suffer bigfinancial losses. Altra said its system should provide users acertain amount of protection in the unpredictable and oftenvolatile power market.

Sempra Energy Trading, formerly AIG Trading Corp, said itopened a satellite trading floor in San Diego to take advantage ofCalifornia’s deregulated market for electricity. The company’s WestCoast operation will initially have 19 employees. They willinterface with power scheduling operations of California’sIndependent System Operator (ISO) and work with Sempra’s East Coastoperations. Sempra is based in Greenwich, CT.

Cash prices continued to drop going into the weekend asexpected. Moderating weather and the usual lower weekend loads werethe obvious reasons for softening, sources said. Despite theoverall downward trend, falls were only 1-3 cents on several pipesin the Gulf Coast and Midcontinent. Again, the points that hadrisen most rapidly earlier in the week-such as Northeast citygates,Northern Natural-demarc and Waha-were the ones seeing the steepestdeclines.