Price

Cash price changes for the weekend varied widely, ranging fromrelative flatness in Appalachia and Northeast citygates to drops of10-20 cents at the California border. The big weakness inCalifornia numbers was due to trader fears of weekend OperationalFlow Orders by SoCal Gas and PG&E, whether or not they evermaterialized, sources said. (Neither utility had an OFO in effectas of Saturday.) However, SoCal was cutting all as-availablestorage injections, helping to keep Topock prices depressed, amarketer said.

The June Nymex contract slipped 4.2 cents to $2.215 on Tuesday,thanks to what one analyst said was intraday selling off technicalresistance at $2.26. Total estimated volume came in at 39,705contracts. “Cash started to rally, so futures have pretty muchconverged with cash. The market is being very cautious, after thebreak last week,” a broker told Daily GPI.

Traders saw a down-then-up pattern in many markets Monday asprice ranges tended to remain volatile, though not as large asduring Friday’s meltdown. The ups were smaller than the downs inmost cases, leaving average prices ranging from barely softer to asmuch as a dime lower. Malin saw the greatness weakness with a fallof about 15 cents, even though weekend OFOs at the Northern andSouthern California borders had ended.

May 1 is known as May Day, celebrated as a springtime festivalin some countries, according to Webster’s. But Friday must haveseemed like “Mayday” (international distress call) to many tradersas they watched cash prices crumble to levels that were virtuallyunimaginable last month. A few Gulf Coast points were sinking below$2 in widely ranging quotes.

May cash prices made a stab at climbing a little higherWednesday, and indeed, one trader said he was “still struggling” tobuy Sonat gas with offers in the low $2.30s. But other sources,while agreeing there was an early push for higher prices, said thenumbers were starting to soften again in the afternoon. “Everybodywent to lunch and then things fell apart,” as a marketer put it.

It seemed reasonable to expect that with the Henry Hub futuresprice barely budging on its last day of trading, cash numbers forMay wouldn’t be moving much in either direction either, as a coupleof sources said prior to the screen expiry Tuesday. Yet tradersreported prices rising a few cents in several markets in afternoondeals. A marketer whose Chicago citygates were in the low $2.30sMonday submitted quotes in the mid to high $2.30s Tuesday. AndPermian Basin gas traded at $2.08-09 most of the day but bumped upto $2.11-12 after the screen closed, a producer said.

Technically, you could call Tuesday’s price action at the NewYork Mercantile Exchange a rally. Not only because the spot Maycontract rose 9.2 cents to $2.561, but also because the marketmoved on strong technical buying. “Funds got back in the market ina big way,” a trader succinctly surmised, referring to an estimatedvolume figure which came in at more than 100,000 contractsyesterday.

The May Nymex contract continued to slowly rebound from itsmassive price downturn on Monday by closing Wednesday up another2.0 cents at $2.521. Trading was held to an extremely tight range,as the spot month could only post a high of $2.555. Total volumewas estimated at 255,671 contracts.

A story titled “NGC Releases First Batchof El Paso Capacity” in the Tuesday April 7 edition of NGI’s DailyGas Price Index mentioned only one of two El Paso capacity packagesbeing released by NGC Corp. NGC is releasing the 593,122 MMBtu/d firmcapacity package through the end of April, but also is releasing thesame quantity with the same delivery and receipt points for a muchlonger term: May 1 through December 31, 1999, which is the end of thecontract term for NGC.