Stand

The cash market went into a general stand-pat mode Wednesday,awaiting developments on the tropical storm, cold weather andstorage fronts. Nearly all points were united in seeing littleprice movement either up or down.

Lacking little new input from weather or futures, the cashmarket decided to take it easy for the most part Tuesday. Flat toslightly higher pricing dominated in most areas, with most of thelarger gains of about a dime or more occurring at Rockies/San Juanpoints.

With little to no change in influences from Monday, cash pricessaw little reason for change themselves Tuesday. The result was agenerally flat market, but small declines outweighed the fewup-ticks.

Absent anything in the way of new influences from weather orfutures, most of the market went into a holding pattern Thursday.Mild softness permeated much of the general flatness as what wasconsidered a bullish storage injection report Wednesday afternoonfailed to provide support for cash prices. Northeast citygates fellabout a nickel, resuming their decline after a brief respite fromthe softness that had prevailed since the first of the month.

While nearly all the production-area points held steady withchanges of no more than a penny or two in both directions, it wasdelivered prices in the Northeast, Midwest and California that gavethe cash market a taste of volatility Thursday. Northeast citygatesrepeated as the day’s big losers with declines from about 35-38cents (Transco Zone 6-NYC and Texas Eastern M-3) to more than 50cents (Iroquois Zone 2 and Algonquin citygate) as the regionexperiences a very slow warming trend from its early-week chill.Ranges were very large as prices fell steadily while tradingproceeded, one source said.

The cash market closed out last week on a somewhat balancednote, with new upticks of a nickel or more in the Northeast arrayedagainst drops between a nickel and a dime at western points. Inbetween there was a vast sea of mostly flatness.

Gas-rich Texas is moving to include preferences for the fuel andfor distributed generation in electric industry restructuring.

Texas gas-fired generation and distributed generation stand togain from recent actions by the state’s Public Utility Commission.Commission staff has proposed a natural gas energy credits (NGEC)trading program with the goal of ensuring that at least 50% of allnew generating capacity, except that powered by renewabletechnologies, be gas-fired after Jan. 1. The proposal does notinclude modifications to generation facilities that merely increaseefficiency of currently installed equipment.

If the first quarter is any indication, Exxon and Mobil needeach other’s help. Exxon’s earnings dropped to $1.02 billion from$1.82 billion in 1Q99 while Mobil experienced a drop from $715million to $471 million. For the merging companies, the fall-offrepresents more than a 33% reduction in net income for each companyfrom the same period last year.