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Five meters at the discharge side of Longview Station on theWillow Springs Lateral in Texas Eastern’s East Texas zone will beshut in today through June 21 for road crossing work and anomalyrepair. The project was delayed two days from a previouslyscheduled Monday start. The same meters will remain shut in June22-27 for previously posted Department of Transportation-relatedwork. In a separate project, Texas Eastern will require the shut-inof all meters upstream of the Iowa (LA) Plant June 21-27 as itupgrades and installs new facilities on Line 41 between Iowa andthe Grand Chenier (LA) Station. The plant’s annual maintenanceshutdown will coincide with the Line 41 outage.

After see-sawing 2 cents on either side of unchanged for much ofthe Nymex trading session yesterday, the futures market rumbledhigher late in the day to finish near its high. The June contractfinished up 2.9 cents at $2.302, which places it squarely in themiddle of its recent $2.205-$2.405 trading range. Estimated volumewas a relatively light 32,280.

After opening at the pivotal $2.00 level yesterday the Maycontract was held to a tight, 3.5-cent trading range, as tradersseemed willing to sell the prompt contract on moves above $2.00 andbuy the market on moves below $2.00. And similar to the priceaction, yesterday’s close had something for everyone. Bulls foundsolace in the market’s ability to finish above $2.00, while bearswere optimistic following the market’s second-straight day oflosses. May slipped 1.7 cents to $2.013.

Semco Energy Inc. sold Semco Energy Services, its natural gasmarketing arm, to MCN Energy Group only weeks after announcingintentions to exit the gas marketing side of its business. Nofinancial terms of the deal were disclosed except that Semcoexpects to record a gain on the sale and the companies expect thetransaction to close by the end of March.

Semco Energy Inc. sold Semco Energy Services, its natural gasmarketing arm, to MCN Energy Group only weeks after announcingintentions to exit the gas marketing side of its business. Nofinancial terms of the deal were disclosed except that Semcoexpects to record a gain on the sale and the companies expect thetransaction to close by the end of March.

Those bemoaning the lack of a competitive market for electricityin California should look on the bright side. Things are movingalong, and the process is not finished, said Daniel D. Richard Jr.,senior vice president government and regulatory relations forPacific Gas and Electric.

Natural gas futures trading at the New York Mercantile Exchangestarted the week slightly on the down side Monday, as bearishfundamentals once again set the tone for a weaker trading session.The March Futures contract opened down 4.2 cents from Friday’ssettle, and continued the day trading in a tight 5-cent range toclose down 3.3 cents at $1.744. “As far as fundamentals areconcerned, the outlook looks bearish for this contract,” one tradersaid. “You have extremely mild weather and no support at Nymex and,certainly, storage numbers are still significant.”

CMS Energy and Westcoast Energy filed an application with FERClast week for the U.S portion of their TriState Pipeline project, a650 MMcf/d gas pipeline that would extend to the Dawn Hub inOntario from Joliet, IL, near Chicago.

In a move to build up the natural gas side of its business andbecome a Btu trading power, American Electric Power subsidiary AEPResources agreed to buy the midstream gas operations of EquitableResources, principally the Louisiana Intrastate Gas (LIG) system,for $320 million in cash. The addition will be AEP’s firstmidstream gas holdings.