Weekend

Limiting the price rebound to just one day, natural gas futures sifted lower ahead of the weekend Friday as trade selling overcame an optimistic opening print. The June contract was the hardest hit, slipping 7 cents on the day and 21.5 cents for the week to close at $4.278.

Prices emerged from the weekend to resume the slide that dominated much of last week’s market. Only the California border-SoCalGas managed to show a gain for the day as a terribly weak screen, continued lack of fundamental support and expectations of another big storage injection report this week combined to push nearly all points down between 10 and 20 cents Monday.

Not surprisingly, the cash market was still falling going into the weekend. Generally Friday’s losses were mild at a dime or less, though, and few points fell much more than a dime other than San Juan Basin, Malin and the California border into PG&E.

Prices emerged from the weekend flat to slightly higher or lowerMonday at nearly all points outside the declining California andRockies/San Juan markets. There probably would have been moreeastern softness, sources said, if weather in the Northeast andMidwest hadn’t exhibited more of a tendency to retreat back intowinter, rather than press forward into spring. Even the South wasseeing more chill than normal for this time of year.

Chairman Joe Barton (R-TX) of the House Energy and Air QualitySubcommittee is expected to decide over the weekend whether tointroduce emergency legislation in an attempt to head off worseningpower shortages and price spikes that are being predicted for theCalifornia wholesale power markets this summer.

Mexican President Vicente Fox said last weekend that he willpush strongly to allow private investment in the country’sstate-run electricity commission because without it, the countrywill have to practically beg for help from the United States tomeet its energy needs. He insisted, however, that there are noplans to privatize the country’s state-run electricity commissionor its state-run oil company.

The Senate over the weekend confirmed by a voice vote SpencerAbraham, a former senator from Michigan, as the secretary of theDepartment of Energy (DOE).

A potential Sonat shut-in of gas behind Toca, LA processingfacilities over the holiday weekend (see Daily GPI, Jan. 16) was averted. Repairs werecompleted at Enterprise’s Toca II plant and it resumed operationsSaturday evening, the pipeline said. That means bothEnterprise-operated facilities and the Western-operated plant “are nowprocessing all of the gas upstream of the plants based on theirrespective commercial arrangements,” Sonat added. It encouraged “allparties to maintain arrangements that will keep the processing plantsoperating at the level necessary to process all gas upstream of Toca.”

President Clinton over the weekend ordered the release of anadditional $300 million in funds to help low-income households tocope with rising heating bills this winter, and announced foursteps to tackle the energy shortages and high prices in California,Washington and Oregon.