Steady

Without any impetus to break in either direction, natural gasfutures continued to subsist on a steady diet of range-boundtrading yesterday at the New York Mercantile Exchange. But incontrast to Tuesday’s session, which featured the market closingnear its high trade for the day, Wednesday’s session was dominatedby selling that ushered the prompt August contract down 3 cents to$2.146. Estimated volume was light, with only 44,985 contractschanging hands.

For the second day in a row, the futures market raced off to afast start as steady buying bolstered prices to their highest marksince December. But in contrast to Tuesday’s price action, whichfeatured the May contract finishing near its daily high,Wednesday’s rally ran into heavy overhead selling that trimmedthose gains into the close. May finished up 3.5 cents to $2.013,after notching a $2.07 high.

Vastar Resources replaced 215% of its 1998 production with newreserves, its highest-ever reserve replacement rate. Provedreserves additions totaled 1,052 Bcfe, or 1,023 Bcfe inclusive ofdivestitures. Year-end total reserves were a record 3,700 Bcfe, up17% over the year-end 1997 base. Average reserve replacement costs,including acquisitions, were $1.11/Mcfe.

The futures market continued its rally on Friday, fed on asteady diet of short-covering and local buying ahead of the holidayweekend. Early gains posted by the October contract led to a quickspike to the $1.86 level before light position squaring trimmedadvances before the closing bell. That left the prompt contract upa respectable 7.1 cents to settle at $1.783. October was not alone,November and December each more than matched October’s gains,increasing 7.6 cents and 7.3 cents, respectively.

TransCanada PipeLines will be continuing its steady pace ofexpansions with a $984 million construction program in 1999 to add275 MMcf/d in delivery capacity to eastern Canada and the U.S.Midwest and Northeast.