Nickel

Flatness or small declines of about a nickel or less dominated the market Wednesday. Sharply higher San Juan/Rockies numbers, along with mild firmness at Northern California points, constituted the primary exceptions to the overall price trend.

Major influences converged to push swing prices lower by about a nickel to just over 20 cents at nearly all points Wednesday: the screen followed up Tuesday afternoon’s decline with even greater expiration-day weakness, and mild late-summer weather virtually everywhere outside the southern edge of the U.S. could no longer be ignored as it had been earlier in the week.

No longer following the screen (which fell about a nickel), cash prices managed to forge their own path higher Tuesday. A great majority of gains were in the teens, but several Northeast citygates rose by 20 cents or more, and Florida citygates soared more than half a dollar into the $4.20s. At the opposite end of the price spectrum, Rockies points flattened out as more supply came on line in response to recent price hikes.

Nearly all points ranged from flat to down about a nickel or less Monday, but several sources regarded that as a relatively firm performance in light of the market’s generally bearish outlook. The Northeast was a bastion of strength with double-digit citygate increases, led by a gain of more than 45 cents at the Algonquin Citygate.

“Flat” was the word of the day in the gas market Thursday. No point varied by more than a nickel from unchanged, and a large majority of them either showed no change or were up or down by only a penny or two.

Swing prices ranged from flat to down about a nickel at most points Tuesday, as the market began to lose some of the cold weather that had kept numbers relatively firm in comparison to a plunging screen the day before. Some San Juan/Rockies/Pacific Northwest points achieved moderate gains, but CIG, Cheyenne Hub and Questar were retreating to sub-$1 levels again, in response to the region’s general supply glut combined with limited storage injection options.

Prices fell by amounts ranging from about a nickel to 20 cents in Friday’s trading. Most eastern declines were a dime or less, while drops in the teens tended to be concentrated in the West. The softening brought numbers at many eastern points back to the vicinity of first-of-month indexes; western prices, which never got back near indexes during last week’s moderate firmness Tuesday through Thursday, just fell further behind.

Prices registered across-the-board upticks that generally ranged from about a nickel to 15 cents Wednesday as cash traders had quite a lot on their plates to digest: the sudden resignation late Tuesday of Jeffrey Skilling as Enron’s president and CEO; the subsequent pounding Wednesday taken by stock prices for Enron and other large energy companies; the formation of Tropical Depression Four in the Atlantic; and the moderate futures strength generated during the morning by news of the tropical activity.

The market eked out small increases Tuesday that generally were a nickel or less. A screen uptick of nearly a dime provided some upward momentum, sources said, but cash traders more likely were anticipating what is expected to be the smallest AGA storage injection report in many weeks.