Plus

It’s taken a little longer than expected, but on Friday, CrossBay Pipeline Co. LLC of Houston fulfilled a two-year plus dream byfiling an application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commissionto increase natural gas deliveries into the New York Citymetropolitan area by 125,000 Dth/d. The proposed project now has atargeted in-service date of Dec. 1, 2002.

Wednesday’s cash market gains got even bigger Thursday asfutures continued to lend support. Virtually all gains were about aquarter or more, with the larger ones of more than 30 centsclustered mainly in the West. Malin led the pack by advancingslightly more than 40 cents.

Coral Energy’s growing e-business website, coralconnect.com, will useWeathermarkets.com to give its 2,000-plus current users specializedenergy weather information. The newest addition to the site will offerNorth American forecast graphics for heating and cooling degree days,current and forecast surface conditions and winter weather, as well asEuropean degree days, Scandinavian temperature and precipitationinformation and worldwide sea conditions.

Coral Energy’s growing e-business website, coralconnect.com,will use Weathermarkets.com to give its 2,000-plus current usersspecialized energy weather information. The newest addition to thesite will offer North American forecast graphics for heating andcooling degree days, current and forecast surface conditions andwinter weather, as well as European degree days, Scandinaviantemperature and precipitation information and worldwide seaconditions.

In what has become almost a routine, natural gas futures coastedto another sizeable gain Friday as traders bid up the June contractin an expiration-day buying frenzy. With no fresh news in which tosink their teeth, traders were content to chew on concerns thatstorage is growing at too slow a pace to match predicted demandlevels, both this summer and next winter as reasons for the rally.Becoming the first contract to post a final settlement above $4.00,the June contract notched an impressive 17-cent gain to settle at$4.406 after peaking at $4.50 during a volatile final 30 minutes oftrading.

Chevron announced last week it has filed a petition asking theU.S. Supreme Court to hear a $742 million breach-of-contract casefirst brought against Gulf Oil Co. in 1982 by Cities Service Co.,which was bought by Occidental in 1984. Dawn Soper, a Chevronspokesperson, said it is now up to the court to rule on thepetition.

“Other than a 15-cent crash, it’s a fairly quiet market.” That’sthe only comment a Sumas trader had to offer Tuesday other than acouple of price quotes. It appeared the cash market may have onlybeen teasing producers with Monday’s moderate firming afterdouble-digit decreases dominated on Tuesday. Some sources pointedat futures as a source of cash weakness, but most said it was morethe continuing lack of positive fundamental influences that causedmost points to approximately double the screen’s fall of just over9 cents.

Chevron announced it has filed a petition asking the U.S.Supreme Court to hear a $742 million breach-of-contract case firstbrought upon Gulf Oil Co. in 1982 by Cities Service Co., which wasbought by Occidental in 1984. Dawn Soper, a Chevron spokesperson,said it is now up to the court to rule on the petition.

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.