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Follow-through on last week’s gains and record-settingtemperatures put bulls squarely in control Monday in the Nymex gaspit. Locals and commercials were good buyers in the first hour oftrading yesterday as they buoyed the market to its highest level insix months. However, after the initial surge the market could notattract fresh buying and was left to chop sideways amid arelatively light 59,236 in estimated volume. The July contractfinished at $2.442, up 0.5 cents for the day.

Everyone seems to be “joining the slow club,” one sourceremarked Wednesday as the last day of June futures trading onlynudged June baseload and the day-trading markets slightly higherfrom the holding patterns established Tuesday. Today will be muchmore active, he said, because the Nymex closes early Friday due toMemorial Day, and time is running out to get deals done.

Questar rescheduled last Tuesday’s planned ball launching toThursday, June 3. Major allocations are expected.

Ground was broken last week for a $275 million, 540 MW naturalgas-fired power plant in Arizona by San Jose, CA-based CalpineCorp., and close observers of the California electric restructuringare indicating this may be the start of more to come throughout theSouthwest.

The Natural Gas Supply Association (NGSA) in a completeabout-face last week withdrew the civil fraud charges against aformer Canadian Embassy aide less than a month after bringing them.The reason given for the action was to encourage negotiationsbetween the two sides, but some took it as a sign that the chargesmay have been weak.

Senate and House lawmakers last week voted out a $15-billionemergency funding measure that, among other things, will give somelong-sought relief to domestic natural gas and oil producers. Thebill is expected to be signed by President Clinton.

Petal Gas Storage, a subsidiary of Crystal Oil, announced itsigned a major 20-year gas storage agreement with Southern Co. lastweek for firm deliverability from its Mississippi salt cavernstorage facility of 700,000 MMBtu/d of gas and storage injectioncapacity for 350,000 MMBtu/d. Southern Company Services will managethe capacity and will act as an agent for its affiliated operatingelectric utility companies: Mississippi Power, Alabama Power,Georgia Power, Gulf Power and Savannah Electric.

Altra said last week it completed the previously announcedmerger of the Streamline and Quicktrade electronic energy tradingsystems, achieving a major goal Altra set when it bought Quicktradein January. Altra said the combined package will increaseStreamline user numbers 30% and boost liquidity.

The sale of Shell subsidiary Transok to Enogex Inc. for about$700 million last week continues Shell’s domestic restructuring anddoubles Enogex’s pipeline holdings. The sale price includesEnogex’s assumption of $173 million in long-term debt. Transok isheadquartered in Tulsa and operates more than 5,000 miles ofpipelines with capacity of about 2.5 Bcf/d and nine gas processingand treating plants.