Hadn

In case anyone hadn’t noticed, profoundly depressed commodityprices have the world oil industry facing serious uncertainty overits future, according to the 1999 edition of World Oil Trends, ajoint report by Arthur Andersen and Cambridge Energy ResearchAssociates (CERA).

Traders who hadn’t finished already wound up their July bidweekbusiness Tuesday and started looking for clues on aftermarketdirection. What they found in swing deals done for today only was amixed bag of flat to up or down slightly from bidweek levels. Butmany sources are expecting an overall strong aftermarket. There maybe some initial softness since the July Fourth holiday weekend isconsidered the lowest demand period of the year. But sources lookfor fundamental cooling load to support gas prices after that.

Marketers were greeted last Thursday morning to something theyhadn’t seen all last week: unequivocally bearish indicators. Ahealthy storage injection, small futures retracement, and wiltingdemand ahead of a holiday weekend had sellers fast out of the chutelooking to unload their gas before the market cratered. This leftprices down anywhere from a couple of cents to almost a dime.However, one source said there was a certain “warm and fuzzy”feeling about trading this week and he looks for continued strengthMonday.

This week’s run-up in cash prices apparently hadn’t run out ofsteam completely Wednesday, but most of the new increases weresmall, and several points either flattened out or, as in the caseof Northern Natural-demarc and Chicago citygates, were starting toretreat from their previous heights.