Managed

The April gas futures contract managed a minor gain Friday of8.4 cents to end the regular trading session at $5.270/MMBtu andclose a relatively quiet week on a somewhat sleepy note. For thetime being, the April contract appears essentially dormant within atrading range between $5.06, which was the low trade for April setlast Tuesday, and Wednesday’s high of $5.385, which was the initialreaction high after the AGA storage data was released.

Puget Sound Energy managed to work out a deal last week to avoida municipal takeover of its service to 8,800 businesses andresidents in Lakewood, WA. Instead, the Lakewood City Council,which had considered a costly condemnation and purchase of PSE’spower distribution system last spring, voted unanimously to workcollaboratively with the utility to improve service for electricitycustomers.

The cash market managed to rebound Monday from the weekend’smild softness, but the bounce back up was small. Monday’s quotesranged from flat to almost a dime higher, with most of the upticksless than a nickel.

Despite Tuesday’s large opening gap and 11.8-cent collapse, theMarch contract found support in the high $2.40s yesterday andmanaged a small 1.5-cent gain to end the regular trading day at$2.530. It hit bottom at $2.465 and reached a high for the day of$2.545. April was down 0.3 cents to $2.541, and nearly all of theremaining months were unchanged from the day prior.

For the second Friday in a row the cash market largely managedto beat the usual lower-demand weekend jinx on spot prices. Exceptfor a wee bit of softness in the relatively mild-weather markets ofCalifornia, the Pacific Northwest and intra-Alberta, quotes wereflat to 3-4 cents up elsewhere and ranging a little higher thanthat at New England citygates (Algonquin and Tennessee Zone 6).

Even as cash prices plummeted 25 cents or more for weekenddeliveries the futures screen managed to push higher Friday astraders looked past the unseasonably warm weather outside theirwindows and focused instead on short and medium range forecasts.After a strong opening at $2.56 the December contract caught a waveof technical buying from both trade and local shorts, allowing itto peak at $2.71 before settling up 12.7 cents at $2.649.

October futures managed to achieve a moderately strong recoveryFriday but apparently there was too much negative baggage left overfrom Thursday’s quarter-plus plunge to support cash. Physical gasprices continued their downhill slide, buffeted by the combinationof weak holiday weekend demand and mild weather virtuallyeverywhere. “Cash just didn’t stand a chance today,” a marketersaid.

Most cash trading points managed to squeeze out minor upticksWednesday despite a modestly softer screen. Activity was subdued asweather fundamentals remained as relatively mild for summer as theywere for much of last winter.

NiSource has named former Vastar CEO William A. (Andy) Lang asthe new president and COO of TPC Corp., which it purchased fromPacifiCorp for $150 million in April. Lang and several other newofficials have been hired to rebuild TPC’s energy marketingoperations and grow its exiting portfolio management business.