Wednesday

After warning shippers Wednesday that one was possible, FloridaGas Transmission issued an Overage Alert Day notice for Thursday’sgas day due to high market-area demand. The notice has a 6%tolerance for daily negative imbalances and covers the system eastof Station 12 (Santa Rosa County in the Florida Panhandle). Thepipeline will re-evaluate conditions this morning before decidingwhether to extend the notice.

Boston-based BEC Energy and Commonwealth Energy System completedtheir merger into $4.5 billion NSTAR Wednesday – one day afterwinning approval for the transaction from the Securities andExchange Commission.

NOVA returned to its normal +10/-10% tolerance range for dailyimbalances Friday after having changed the range to +2/-18%Wednesday. The two-day change was made in order to reduce linepackto target levels, which was necessary before proceeding withmaintenance on Schrader Creek Compressor Station, NOVA said.

Following aggressive buying and double-digit increases achievedin Wednesday’s Access trading session, the futures market cooledoff yesterday as physical traders eschewed the opportunity to belong gas at the $2.70 level for the month of August. Once themarket was unable to get past the $2.72 high from Access sellerscame out of the woodwork and demoted the September contract to$2.569, down 3.7 cent for the session.

After a volatile three days of seller-dominated trading Tuesday,Wednesday and Thursday last week, the futures market was quietFriday as light pre-weekend short covering was almost perfectlymatched by follow-through selling. The August contract could manageonly a 4.5-cent trading range before finishing 0.1 cents higher forthe day at $2.163. Estimated volume was relatively modest, with55,158 contracts changing hands.

The board of directors for the London-based InternationalPetroleum Exchange urged its members Wednesday to accept a buy-outoffer from five outside investors rather than accept a proposedmerger bid from the New York Mercantile Exchange. The 475 membersof the IPE will vote on the sale at an extraordinary generalmeeting held on July 30. The board threatened to resign if theoutside investor sale failed.

The futures market continued higher Wednesday in another quiettrading session where local buying was too much for scale-up tradeselling. But despite its 2.6 cent advance to finish at $2.264, theJuly contract fell short of filling in the chart gap up to Friday’s$2.283 low. Estimated volume was a relatively light 56,980.

Pennaco Energy increased its capital expenditure budgetWednesday from $18.4 million to $26.5 million in a move intended tocapture the “hottest domestic onshore play” in the country. All ofthe revised budget will be invested in Powder River Basinoperations.

CMS Gas Transmission and Storage Co. continued its activitybinge Wednesday as its subsidiary CMS Continental Natural Gaspurchased Anson Gas Marketing and the Midcontinent Gas Pipelinefrom Chesapeake Energy Marketing. Terms of the transaction were notdisclosed.