Three

AltaGas Services bought three Canadian processing facilities andassociated gathering lines worth $17.4 million on Friday,continuing the Calgary-based midstream company’s trek toward the$200 million growth-spending goal set at the beginning of 1999.With this purchase, AltaGas has spent and committed a total of $115million in its acquisitions and expansion program so far this year.

After beginning last week in the middle of a three-dayhigh-inventory OFO (see Daily GPI, June 22), Pacific Gas &Electric declared another one for Saturday after previously sayingit expected system linepack to remain well above the utility’starget through the weekend. The new order carried a positiveimbalance tolerance of 11% and penalties of $1/dth fornon-compliance.

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.

“The Three Stooges didn’t fall as fast or as hard,” one traderremarked, as the usual weekend demand crunch, a bearish 6- to10-day forecast and Thursday’s futures market plunge were cited asreasons for the nearly universal drops of over a nickel. New YorkCitygate prices were among the hardest hit Friday, as Monday’shighpoint of $2.75 has given way to the mid $2.40s at the week’sclose.

After three consecutive days marked by the bullish pattern ofhigher highs and higher lows, the futures market receded yesterdayon a wave of selling pressure by both commercial and local traders.June wilted into its daily close, tumbling 8.1 cents lower tofinish at $2.262.

Trunkline postponed a three-day outage of Valve Section 32between the Cypress and Kountze Stations in East Texas until June.It will require shutting in all receipts upstream of the sectionunless they entail equal deliveries upstream.

Columbia Energy has accepted defeat in the three-month battlewith Dominion Resources for a merger with Consolidated Natural Gas.Columbia officially withdrew its $6.7 billion offer late Tuesdayfollowing a sweetened merger bid by Virginia Power parent Dominionset at $6.4 billion and the CNG board’s unanimous approval of arevised agreement with Dominion.

The Carolinas are calling out for gas and so far three partieshave answered.

Following three straight days of gains, bull traders had theirwinning streak cut late Monday after trading in positive territoryfor much of the session. And although many sources were expecting apullback following the near 20-cent price spike last week, somefelt the prompt contract’s inability to make a new high was anegative feature. The May contract finished down 0.8 cents at$2.03.