Reminds

The torrent of natural gas production coming out of North America’s shale plays reminds Jim Duncan, chief analyst and commodity market strategist at ConocoPhillips Gas & Power, of the opening lines of “A Tale of Two Cities,” Charles Dickens’ epic novel of the French Revolution.

Bullied by the one-two combination of cooler weather forecasts and speculative fund buying, the natural gas futures market accelerated higher Tuesday in a session marked by light activity and choppy trading action.

NGPL reminds that today is the start of its open season forcapacity from Chicago and other points on its system to the Eastunder its capacity exchange deal with TETCO. NGPL is marketing the”seamless” transportation service under its new HubAmerica program.The open season to determine the level of customer interest endsJune 15. Contact Bruce Page, director of HubAmerica, (877) 482-2637

Natural gas futures turned lower yesterday when a mixed bag ofspeculative and non-speculative selling more than offset light fundbuying. After gapping lower at the open, the February contractquickly mapped out its small, 5-cent trading range and moved verylittle for the remainder of the session. But the price damage hadalready been done, leaving the prompt month 9.6 cents lower tofinish at $1.975 and putting an abrupt halt to a 3-day, 29 centprice spike.