Stop

Is the market in early meltdown stage? At least one traderthought so, saying, “Yep, it sure looks that way” after the screentacked on a second straight day of double-digit losses Wednesdayand was joined by the cash market recording price drops rangingbetween a dime and a little more than 20 cents.

The Washington State Attorney General’s Office said it will sueto stop BP Amoco and Arco from merging their companies. The Stateof Oregon also said it will join Washington and the Federal TradeCommission (FTC) in opposing the merger. California also isreviewing its litigation options.

TransCanada PipeLines Ltd. has opened a second front in itsfight to stop, before it starts, a revenue hemorrhage seen on thehorizon as a result of new competition in natural gastransportation.

If Y2K doesn’t bring an end to the gas and power industries, itcertainly won’t do anything to stop them from hooking up. Judgingby what’s happened so far, gas and power will never stand alooffrom one another again.

FERC Chairman James Hoecker said yesterday the Commissionintends to proceed with a vote on the hotly contested MarketLinkexpansion next week despite New Jersey Gov. Christine ToddWhitman’s threat of a lawsuit if the project is approved.

Natural Gas futures slipped lower for the second day in a rowyesterday as light scale-down industrial buying was no match forcommercial and fund selling. The November contract traded to itslowest price in ten weeks at $2.52 before settling at $2.586, 3.9cents lower on the day.

Natural gas futures made it three in a row yesterday when acombination of commercial short covering and local buy-stop huntingboosted the contract to its highest level since last week. In doingso, the prompt contract was able to fill in a chart gap createdbetween Friday’s $2.283 low and Monday’s $2.26 high. July finishedat $2.295, up 3.1 on the day.

Consumers are becoming more interested in buying energy,communications and other services in one-stop package deals, arecent national survey has found. However, customers expect any”bundled” products and services to be offered at a discount of atleast 5%, according to the survey. In fact, interest in specificpackages increases in direct proportion to the depth of thediscount. Overall, customers assume that combining products andservices in a package over a single brand will add value and createeconomies of scale

Cash prices took a cue from the futures screen Thursday andpulled out of their headlong dive that has dominated the marketsince Monday. But sources considered the general leveling off ofprices, which leaned slightly to the softer side, as onlytemporary. Noting that Northern market areas already have startedcooling off from their recent temperature heights and that thecooling trend is expected to spread further this weekend, manytraders expect the general downturn to resume today.