Posting

The August Nymex contract may have taken a significant steptoward posting further losses on Friday, but the jury on that isstill out. After August fell below major support at $2.32 Friday,enough buyers stepped in to prevent the spot month from moving anylower than $2.30. That enabled August to settle the day down 4.0cents to $2.309, but more selling could be in store when tradingresumes today. “I think a lot of traders took off early Fridayafternoon, or were simply not interested in putting in fresh openpositions before the weekend,” an analyst commented.

Interstate pipelines said they support FERC’s proposedrulemaking calling for them to post the identities of theirmarketing affiliates and any name change information on theInternet as part of the Commission’s effort to better monitortransactions between the parties. But they took issue with theproposed requirement that they update the information within threebusiness days of any change.

After posting losses in the Tuesday evening Access session, theJuly Nymex contract gapped lower on the open yesterday, thencontinued to falter closing at $2.106, down a nickel. The contractwas held within a tight 4 cent range between $2.095-135 whichalmost identically mirrored Henry Hub cash prices on the day.Estimated volume was 41,493

Following three days when trading volume at the New YorkMercantile Exchange averaged 117,518 contracts, the May contractgained a mere 1.4 cents to $2.342 amid a session when “only” 74,378contracts changed hands. Sources said much of the activity onFriday was simply position covering ahead of both the weekend andthe expiration of the May contract this Tuesday.

The following is a clarification of a story titled “NGC’sCapacity Posting,” which ran in Daily GPI, April 22: Thecalculations and conclusions described in the story were totallythose of Michael J. Harris of the Reed Consulting Group ascontained in a FERC filing made by the producers protesting the NGCcapacity contracts on El Paso. The Prebon Energy brokerage housemade no predictions. A footnote to the filing says Prebon, whichhas offices in Jersey City, NJ, and Houston, supplied futurequotes at a specific time – 11:30 a.m. on March 30 – of the SanJuan Basin-California border basis differential. The quoted remarksregarding the expected San Juan-SoCal basis differential for thefuture and the attractiveness of the NGC capacity to other shipperswere those of Harris and the Reed Consulting group. Further Prebonsays it did not give basis information to Mr. Harris or the ReedConsulting Group but that the basis information attributed toPrebon was supplied by one of the parties to the filing. NGIregrets the error.