Logical

Taking the next logical step for the transportation of Canadian arctic natural gas, the Mackenzie Delta Producers Group, which consists of some of the heavy hitters within the oil and gas industry, said last Thursday that it has awarded the conceptual and preliminary engineering contract for the Mackenzie Gas Project to COLTKBR, a long-term joint venture of Colt Engineering Corp. and Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton. The move brings the project a step closer to fruition and a step ahead of the competition in Alaska.

The market was back at it Friday, acting contrary to logical thinking in some traders’ minds. Eastern points were mostly flat overall, but ranging from mildly softer to more than a nickel higher at a few Northeast citygates despite weather in most areas that didn’t appear to justify relative firmness. Meanwhile, an honest to goodness winter storm was moving eastward into the Rockies, yet numbers were down by a nickel or more at most western points.

New Jersey’s largest publicly owned utility has asked stateregulators to take natural gas competition to its next logical stepby giving it the green light to begin selling gas to all customerclasses at market-based rates in 2003.

“You can’t win the game if you give the ball away” was aseemingly logical but somewhat superfluous observation made byHoward Cosell on Monday Night Football back in the 1980s. If Cosellwere to have commented on the natural gas futures market yesterday,he probably would have said something like, “The market couldn’tmove lower because there was no additional selling.” And althoughthat comment would also have been redundant, it aptly describes thenature of yesterday’s price action at the New York MercantileExchange, where once early selling dried up, the market was free tobubble higher in near-frictionless trade. The May contract finishedup 3.2 cents to $2.128.