Mornings

As red maple leaves and frosty mornings herald the onset of heating season in Quebec, distributor Gaz Metro Inc. (GMI) is asking for cancellation of a pipeline safety directive that could make fall extra chilly for French Canadian natural gas consumers.

Natural gas futures traders might as well sleep in on Wednesday mornings. Or maybe they already are…. Wednesdays have taken on a sort of split personality, in which a barren desert suddenly gives way to a deluge of trading activity when fresh storage data is released at 2 p.m (EDT). That was the case yesterday as futures opened unchanged only to drift lazily sideways for 4.5 hours. Then, when a larger-than-expected storage figure was released, the market tumbled 13 cents in just five minutes. July rebounded modestly in the final 65 minutes of trading to close at $3.801, down 9.1 cents on the day, but up 7.1 cents from its low for the session.