Traders

After seesawing throughout most of the morning, futures pricestumbled again Wednesday as traders surveyed the threat of freshbearish fundamental news. The front-month January contract finisheddown 7.2 cents to $1.886 at the close, barely off session lows of$1.88. Estimated volume was a healthy 67,274.

Changes were in the air last Wednesday at the New YorkMercantile Exchange. Traders were greeted with a new promptmonth-January, a stronger December cash market, and even a freshrally-thanks to a short-covering Tuesday. Just about the only thingthat hadn’t changed were the bearish fundamental factors-storageand weather-prevalent in the market. But once again thosefundamentals were king Wednesday, and the selling pushed theJanuary contract down 7.9 cents to $2.196 at the closing bell.

It looks like bears are roaming the market woods for the holidayseason, said a producer noting new softness in both futures andcash prices Friday. No nay-sayers to her assessment could be foundas sources agreed that weather and storage fundamentals continue tolook weak for the foreseeable future, barring a surprise blizzardor two. A marketer said he “wouldn’t be surprised if we end up withDecember indexes looking a lot like November’s.”

Traders’ opinions have varied as to the direction the futuresmarket would take this week, and so it came as no surprise Mondaywhen it tested both the upside and the downside in early trading.But, when selling dried up below the $2.10 level, the Novembercontract was free to migrate higher to settle at $2.143.

El Paso’s Bondad System in the San Juan Basin is constrained tothe point that some gas traders mockingly refer to it as “Bondage.”Anything to ease the constriction ought to be welcomed with openarms by those who deal with that point, right? Yet the pipeline’sBondad Expansion project, aimed at adding 116.5 MMcf/d to thesystem’s current capacity of about 567.7 MMcf/d, is in danger offailing because FERC feels the three shippers paying all of theproject’s costs should share their expansion space withnonparticipants.

El Paso’s Bondad System in the San Juan Basin is constrained tothe point that some gas traders mockingly refer to it as “Bondage.”Anything to ease the constriction ought to be welcomed with openarms by those who deal with that point, right? Yet the pipeline’sBondad Expansion project, aimed at adding 116.5 MMcf/d to thesystem’s current capacity of about 567.7 MMcf/d, is in danger offailing because FERC feels the three shippers paying all of theproject’s costs should share their expansion space withnonparticipants.

Prices continued to deteriorate Tuesday for much the same reasonas in the previous couple of trading days: weather that’s cool butnot sufficiently cold to generate significant heating demand. Therewasn’t even much cooling load left in Texas after astorm-generating cold front that had knocked out phone service indowntown Tulsa for several hours Monday got as far south asHouston.

The futures market again came under selling pressure onWednesday as traders embraced the possibility Hurricane Georgeswould not be a threat to natural gas concerns in the Gulf ofMexico. The October contract was able to post an optimistic open at$2.23 before profit taking led the contract to settle at $2.131, a5.5 cent loss for the day.

Traders finally got a chance to conduct business Monday for whatseemed like the first day in September with no tropical stormsimmediately threatening, disrupting or starting to move on afterhaving disrupted Gulf of Mexico production. “It was nice to have alittle window with nothing [storm-related] imminent,” one soucesaid. Cash prices reacted to what has been generally bearishfundamentals all along with declines of between a nickel and eitherside of a dime.