Took

R. Skip Horvath, president of the Natural Gas Supply Association(NGSA) and former official of a major pipeline group, took theinitial step yesterday towards trying to unify a fragmented naturalgas industry.

CIG said Monday current weather conditions and the short-rangeforecast would allow it to lift today the OFO that took effect Nov.11. However, because of high storage inventories and the resultantinflexibility in handling excess positive imbalances orabove-contract injections, the pipeline declared a StrainedOperating Condition effective today until further notice. Nopayback nominations are being accepted.

As expected, weekend prices took a steep plunge in Friday’strading as almost every point fell by around 20 cents or more. Thebiggest drops of almost 40 cents occurred at the SouthernCalifornia border and PG&E citygate, where both majordistributors had widely anticipated high-inventory OFOs in placefor Saturday.

With the futures screen lending little to no direction to thecash market, weather took over as the dominant influence Tuesday.Existing and expected chilly temperatures caused gains between 4and 10 cents in the Gulf Coast and Midcontinent regions. Northeastpoints made the biggest moves of the day, with many jumping morethan 15 cents.

When futures took a steep dive after cash trading had beencompleted Thursday, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to predictthat cash prices would be headed into the dumpster Friday. Sureenough, quotes for the weekend were way down. Most of the declineswere between 10 and 25 cents, but some in Appalachia and theNortheast reached the 40-50 cents range. The smaller drops tendedto be concentrated at western points.

Natural gas futures took a Wylie Coyote-like free-fall yesterdayafter a bearish conspiracy of weather and technicals gave traderslittle choice but to liquidate long positions. After notching a newtwo-month high Wednesday afternoon, the December contract openedlower at $3.18 and never looked back, plummeting 25.8 cents tofinish at $2.965. January fared little better, tumbling 23.6 centsto $2.994.

Northern Natural Gas took its Plains Turbine down Monday forabout three weeks of unplanned repairs. The outage affects 100,000MMbtu/d at nine points on the Hobbs System in southeastern NewMexico.

Dynegy’s takeover of Illinova took a big step toward completion as shareholders for each company last week voted in favor of the transaction. Illinova’s vote of approval was announced during a special meeting at company headquarters in Decatur, IL, while Dynegy’s was held during a special shareholder meeting in Houston.

Dynegy’s takeover of Illinova took a big step toward completionas shareholders for each company voted in favor of the transactionyesterday. Illinova’s vote of approval was announced during aspecial meeting at company headquarters in Decatur, IL, whileDynegy’s was held during a special shareholder meeting in Houston.