Traded

March futures added to Wednesday’s late gains on some technical short-covering but traded sideways most of the day Thursday, ending up 4.9 cents to $2.15 with a daily high of $2.16 and a low of $2.085. Several observers said if the contract can trade above $2.165 and build a little upward momentum, it might drive more shorts to cover and produce a small rally. But few are willing to bet the farm on that given the warm weather and enormous storage surplus.

PanCanadian Energy Corp., the new publicly traded parent of PanCanadian Petroleum Ltd., began trading shares Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol PCX and on The Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol PCE. CEO David Tuer said the Calgary-base company has more than 254 million shares trading on the two North American exchanges. PanCanadian Energy’s core areas are the Western Basin, including land in Western Canada and the United States, the Gulf of Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the East Coast of Canada with its Deep Panuke discovery.

To some extent the West and East traded price patterns Wednesday. Eastern points, which had been softening a day earlier, registered gains nearly across the board ranging from about a nickel to a dime. In the West, only the San Juan Basin, Pacific Northwest, intra-Alberta, Malin and California border-SoCalGas markets continued to build on their gains from earlier in the week. Rockies and PG&E-related points (border and citygate) fell about 20 cents.

Plans to separate Baltimore Gas & Electric’s parent Constellation Energy Group into two publicly traded corporations remain on track for completion this year, Christian Poindexter, the company’s CEO, told shareholders at the end of last week.

After failing to punch through last Wednesday’s high, natural gas futures traded mostly sideways Monday, as neither bull nor bear could influence prices. At the closing bell, the May contract was 0.3 cents weaker at $5.125.

Enron Energy Services and Macerich Co., a publicly traded realestate investment trust, announced a 10-year energy managementagreement for more than 40 wholly-owned and joint ventureproperties. Enron will manage the supply of electricity and naturalgas and provide related energy management services for theproperties, including energy infrastructure upgrades.

With little in the way of fresh fundamental news, natural gasfutures traded mostly sideways yesterday as traders rested after atumultuous 10 days of trading activity. A modest gain in the promptmonth was more than offset by losses in each of the out months.November finished up 0.5 cents at $4.664 while the 12-month stripclosed 1.6 cents lower at $4.313.

AIG Financial Products Corp. and Enron Investment Partners Co.have acquired minority stakes in TreasuryConnect, a transactionexecution system for financial products traded between corporationsand banks. Bruce Usher, co-founder and president ofTreasuryConnect, said he was “extremely pleased” with AIG’s andEnron’s investment in his company, and said that “it reflectsfavorably on our technology and its ability to improve trading andoperational efficiency.” Even though it domestically transacts morethan $6 trillion a year, the interest rate and currency swap marketis one of the last markets to migrate to the Internet because ofthe relative complexity of derivative products, and the subtletiesof the trading process, according to Usher. TreasuryConnect, withoffices in New York City and Los Angeles, offers an Internet-basedtrading platform specifically designed for financial transactionsbetween banks and corporations. It also offers direct back officelinks for straight through processing, documentation solutions,historical data, research and analytical tools to facilitatetrading. AIG Financial is a wholly-owned subsidiary of AmericanInternational Group Inc. and Enron Investment is a wholly-ownedsubsidiary of Enron Corp.

An actively traded over-the-counter market set the stage for aturbulent session Friday in the natural gas pit at Nymex andtraders did not disappoint — taking prices higher on the openbefore sending them lower in two distinct selling waves.