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“It’s been a fun market recently if you like roller-coasters.” AGulf Coast marketer was referring to Thursday pricing that onceagain started significantly lower but later moved higher to settlenear the top end of daily ranges. Softening continued at mostpoints but was very mild compared to the larger drops earlier thisweek. A majority of the declines were about a nickel or less, and afew scattered points even turned in flat performances.

What had seemed like a mildly softer early aftermarket in swingdeals done Tuesday got much weaker Wednesday. Influenced greatly bya falling screen but also by a continuing lack of positivefundamentals, nearly all points were down a dime or more. NorthernCalifornia was a rare bastion of relative market strength in theU.S. Malin and the PG&E citygate dropped only about a nickel asPG&E repeated last week’s unusual action of issuing alow-inventory OFO on a summer weekday.

For a while Thursday it looked like August prices would keeprunning higher based on a strong screen, continued heavy powergeneration load and Wednesday afternoon’s super-bullish storagereport. However, the uptrend crested and began subsiding a bit whena late “meltdown” occurred in September futures, sources said.

Much of the U.S. bore some resemblance to a lit oven Thursday,and the Nymex screen was soaring like a space shuttle takeoff fromCape Canaveral. The two events combined to give strong support toeastern cash prices, which rose between a nickel and a dime atalmost every point. Gas demand was especially intense at theNortheast and Chicago citygates; both were up about a dime. TranscoZone 6-NYC deliveries topped all points with a high of $2.70.

Like a bouncing ball, natural gas futures continued to chopsideways yesterday as scale down buyers took advantage of lowprices afforded them by the market’s dip Wednesday. The Augustcontract finished up 3.3 cents at $2.179, and in doing so continuedits five-day streak of alternating advances and losses.

When things just started to look like they were getting better,all of a sudden they just got worse for MCN Energy Group. After atough year in 1998 and the planned divestiture of its entireexploration and production division, MCN Energy Group said lastweek it discovered serious financial accounting manipulation withinits gas marketing subsidiary, CoEnergy Trading, and will have torecalculate its earnings going back to 1997.

Much like Charismatic, winner of the Preakness and the KentuckyDerby,the futures market was off to the races Monday. Afteropening slightly more than a penny below Friday’s settlement price,the futures market spiked dramatically higher in the first hour oftrading as local buying pushed the market through last week’s$2.315 high. June continued higher yesterday afternoon, finishingup 5.5 cents to $2.343.

When things just started to look like they were getting better,all of a sudden they just got worse for MCN Energy Group. After atough year in 1998 and the planned divestiture of its entireexploration and production division, MCN Energy Group saidyesterday it has discovered serious financial accountingmanipulation within its gas marketing subsidiary, CoEnergy Trading,and will have to recalculate its earnings going back to 1997.

Texas Independent Energy, a 50-50 joint venture of PSEG Global of New Jersey and Panda Energy International of Dallas, plans to design, build and operate a third merchant power plant in Texas. This one, to be in Ector County, represents a total investment of about $300 million. The Ector County plant will burn an average of 145 MMcf/d with a peak gas consumption of 170 MMcf/d. Commercial operation is expected by summer 2001.