Uprising

A landowner uprising is buying time for Canadian natural gas suppliers to mount a resistance campaign against a plan to import rival production from the United States.

Soaring Rockies prices, with some pipes going up by more than $3 and topping $7 in their high-end quotes, led a cash market uprising at virtually all points Wednesday. Cold weather in northern market areas and Tuesday’s 32.3-cent gain by May futures were responsible for the general firmness.

The Big Apple was where the big prices were Monday. Transco’s Zone 6-New York City pool spiked as high as $18 and rose more than $2 on average to lead more modest gains at most other Northeast points as a new winter storm took aim at southern portions of the region. However, spreading cold in the rest of the U.S. gave little price support to the general market, which ranged from a few cents higher to down about 15 cents.

The winter of 2002/03 doesn’t seem to realize its time is up. Snow and ice storms scattered from the central Plains through the Midwest and Northeast resulted in gains ranging from about a nickel to 45 cents in non-Rockies/San Juan Basin markets Monday, although a couple of scattered points barely eked out any increase at all.

Once again a previous-afternoon screen uprising worked its magic on next-day cash prices. Friday quotes for weekend flow mostly ranged from approximately flat to nearly a quarter higher. A majority of the gains were relatively modest at around a dime or less.

Prices were still moving higher Friday, but at roughly half the pace of Thursday’s uprising. Overall, Friday’s increases ranged from about 8 to 20 cents. Gulf Coast numbers generally rose on either side of a dime, with moderately larger gains in the teens prevailing in other market areas. Most of the upticks above 15 cents were in the West.

The cash market was stronger by varying degrees Tuesday withprice movement ranging from flat to about a dime higher. Butsources didn’t expect the firmness to last, since many points wereheading back down along with the screen in late business. Theiroutlook was reinforced when the June futures contract continued todrop in afternoon Access activity.

The cash market was back on a downhill slide Wednesday as theuprising that had carried some points as much as 80-90 cents higherin the first two days of the week ran out of gas. The retrenchmentwas not unexpected because futures were falling for the second dayin a row and the colder weather that had driven the earlier uptickswas giving way to new forecasts calling for no colder than “normal”temperatures in many areas.

The cash market took something of a breather Tuesday followingthe breathtaking uprising that began the week. Several pointscontinued to rise but by decidedly smaller amounts than on Monday.Flat to slightly higher was the general rule, but Rockies numberswere falling as supply outages neared an end and mild weather inthe Western U.S. continued to depress demand. Malin and theSouthern California border also fell by small amounts.