Than

Rising sales volumes and favorable currency exchange rates morethan made up for erosion of prices fetched by Canadian exports inthe last natural gas contract year.

Natural gas futures turned lower yesterday when a mixed bag ofspeculative and non-speculative selling more than offset light fundbuying. After gapping lower at the open, the February contractquickly mapped out its small, 5-cent trading range and moved verylittle for the remainder of the session. But the price damage hadalready been done, leaving the prompt month 9.6 cents lower tofinish at $1.975 and putting an abrupt halt to a 3-day, 29 centprice spike.

As bidweek approached the home stretch Thursday, traders foundfixed prices mostly a little higher than they had been Wednesdaybut still considerably below where they had been at the start ofthe week Monday. A marketer whose earliest purchases into PanhandleEastern were in the mid $2.00s said the numbers rebounded to$1.93-94 Thursday after having dipped to just under $1.90Wednesday.

Cash Prices continued their upward rally Tuesday, skyrocketingin excess of 20 cents at most delivery points. Most sources agreeda vigorous buying spree fueled by market players coming into theweek short in anticipation of lower prices was largely to blame forthe continued spikes in most areas.

Midland, TX-based Clayton Williams Energy Inc. will acquire morethan 65 Bcf of gas equivalent reserves in east Texas from SonatExploration Co. The company executed a purchase and sale agreementwith Sonat to acquire the assets for about $46.5 million. Thetransaction is effective April 1. The assets are concentrated inthree east Texas fields and consist mainly of long-life gasreserves with significant potential for behind-pipe re-completionsand developmental drilling. Clayton Williams will assume operationson substantially all of the acquired properties at closing,expected to occur by Nov. 20.

Southern Company CEO A.W. “Bill” Dahlberg is something more thanshy about predicting where gas prices will go. But the industry’sembrace of gas-fired generation does prompt a modestly optimisticresponse to the question. “It would be logical to say that ifthere’s that much new demand for gas, the likelihood is that itwill drift up. And I guess if I were making the bet, that’sprobably the bet that I would make,” Dahlberg told reporters duringa briefing at the 17th Congress of the World Energy CouncilWednesday in Houston.

Deregulation is creating more opportunities for distributedgeneration than there have been since the 1920s, according toconsultant Frost &amp Sullivan. Although regulatory, technical,economic and environmental hurdles remain, deregulation hasprompted utilities and other energy providers to start offeringdistributed generation as a value-added service to retaincustomers. Also, some industrial and commercial customers arebuying generators to gain independence from electric providers.

Gulf producers battened down the hatches on hundreds ofplatforms yesterday, shut in more than 2.5 Bcf/d of gas andscrambled ashore as Tropical Storm Earl, which seemed to pop out ofnowhere Monday, rapidly gained strength and appeared likely tobecome the Gulf’s first hurricane by this morning. At 4 p.m.yesterday, the National Weather Service said hurricane warningswere in effect from Pascagoula, MS, to Cameron, LA. Hurricanewatches were in effect from east of Pascagoula to Destin, FL, andwest of Cameron to High Island, TX. Earl was centered near 27degrees north latitude and 93 degrees west longitude, moving northnortheast at 12 mph with 60 mph winds. The NWS said it expectedEarl to become a hurricane prior to landfall.

Cash prices finally turned downward Thursday, a day later thanseveral sources had expected. Even with the futures screen staginga modest rally, cash traders were unable to ignore the previous twodays’ weakness in the Nymex pit, the continuing lack of weatherfundamentals and yet another bearish storage report that once againemphasised how close injection demand is getting to disappearing.