Tale

It was a tale of two cash markets on Friday, as the majority ofprice points east of the Rockies registered gains of 1 to 7 cents,while prices to the West dropped because of the typical weekenddecrease in California power demand exacerbated by a weekendconstraint announced on PG&E’s system. El Paso (non-Bondad) wasone of the pipes to fall the farthest, finishing in the mid $2.20s.

It was a tale of two markets Friday at the New York MercantileExchange. Softer cash market prices helped push futures priceslower early in the trading session. Those losses, however, werequickly erased in the afternoon as traders weighed the impact offorecasts calling for warming temperatures this week. The Julycontract finished at $2.437, 4 cents higher for the day and 7.9cents for the week.

Results of Burlington Resources, Apache Corp., Vastar Resources,and Union Pacific Resources began the tale of woe that independentproducers’ will be telling with their third quarter earnings. Thecompanies cited a common cause for their malaise – depressed gasand oil prices and liquids margins that are at historic lows.

Results of Burlington Resources, Apache Corp., and VastarResources are just the beginning of the tale of woe thatindependent producers’ will be telling with their third quarterearnings. The companies turned in results that could only beconsidered poor outside the context of depressed gas and oil pricesand liquids margins that are at historic lows. Production of allthree companies was impacted by Gulf storms and hurricanes.