Intraday

Effective with Intraday 1 nominations Wednesday, Dominion rescinded the “Valley Gate” restriction on south-to-north transportation.

Apparently the screen’s meteoric rise of more than a dollar over the previous two days, culminating in Tuesday’s all-time intraday and daily settlement records for a prompt month contract, wasn’t all that impressive to cash traders Wednesday. Nor was heating load staying fairly heavy across northern market areas despite prospects for a bit of moderation from earlier in the week.

Destin reported reopening the valve on its export line at Main Pass 260 and was accepting Intraday 2 (cycle 4) nominations for Monday’s gas day. The pipeline had turned off the valve to offshore receipts upstream of Main Pass 260 at 3 p.m. Friday in preparation for the approach of Hurricane Dennis (see Daily GPI, July 11).

With its intraday bar chart looking like the EKG of a cardiac arrest patient who didn’t make it, the natural gas futures market followed Thursday’s heart-stopping price drop with flat-line trading activity Friday. On its first day as prompt month at Nymex, the August contract closed 4.8 cents lower at $5.362. At 47,013, estimated volume was extremely light.

The June Nymex contract slipped 4.2 cents to $2.215 on Tuesday,thanks to what one analyst said was intraday selling off technicalresistance at $2.26. Total estimated volume came in at 39,705contracts. “Cash started to rally, so futures have pretty muchconverged with cash. The market is being very cautious, after thebreak last week,” a broker told Daily GPI.