Raged

Although several major wildfires still raged Friday, particularly in the mountains east of Los Angeles and San Diego, the region’s natural gas infrastructure escaped virtually unaffected by California’s worst outbreak of fires in recent memory. Three major distribution networks and one intra-state backbone transmission system traverse the heavily gas-dependent Southern California area.

The war of words between the ANR Pipeline and Guardian PipelineLLC over the proposed Guardian line into southeastern Wisconsinraged on this week, bearing all the earmarks of theHatfields-and-McCoys’ feud – minus the rifles.

Arguments likely raged all day Friday over whether the gasmarket was overreacting to Tropical Storm Bret or not. But as evena member of the “overhyped” camp reluctantly conceded, there was nodenying that cash prices ignored mild northern market-area weatherand the usual drop in weekend load to achieve gains of up to adime. The smallest showings of flat to only about a nickel highercame at western points, which are more insulated from potentiallosses of Gulf of Mexico production.