Weekend

In a topsy-turvy session that made traders glad the weekend wasnear, natural gas futures spiked and retraced three times Fridayamid a bevy of fundamental and technical news. After encounteringsubstantial selling in the low $6.80s early in the day, the Januarycontract checked sideways for much of the session, finishing up 8.4cents at $6.673. Comparatively the rest of the 12-month strip, ledby March, which erupted 20.7 cents to close at $6.043, experienceddouble-digit gains.

Responding to persistent rumors over the Thanksgiving weekend ofa possible profit warning, Enron COO Jeffrey Skilling has deniedproblems with earnings for any of the myriad energy andcommunications businesses for North America’s largest buyer andseller of natural gas and electricity. Enron’s stock did fall lastweek, however, as did other energy stocks.

Apparently the cash market was just taking a price-consolidationbreather for the weekend because it returned to a steep upwardtrack Monday. Only Florida citygates failed to rise by more than 30cents, and the highly volatile California and Pacific Northwestmarkets led the price charge with gains of 60 cents or more.

Transwestern declared force majeure at the Bloomfield (NM)Compressor Station after the #4 unit went down over the weekend.Repair downtime is uncertain pending the availability of parts, thepipeline said, but it hoped to have the unit back in serviceFriday. The outage reduces normal San Juan Lateral capacity of850,000 MMBtu/d to about 580,000 MMBtu/d today and about 800,000MMBtu/d Thursday.

California Gov. Gray Davis over the weekend signed into law and vetoed separate measures addressing parts of the state’s ongoing electricity crisis. Davis acted on a half dozen initiatives as the deadline for enacting new state laws expired Saturday. Among the new laws are ones that will accelerate power plant siting and extend ratepayer-supported energy efficiency programs.

A Nova Gas Transmission 12-inch-diameter gathering line explodedover the weekend, causing a fire that injured a pipeline employee.The employee was treated and released. The rupture, which occurredon the northwestern part of Nova’s Alberta pipeline system about 60miles north of Fairview, also forced the curtailment of about 50MMcf/d of gas.

Citing forecasts of cooler temperatures in the Pacific Northwestfor the holiday weekend, Northwest began allowing both on-systemand off-system balancing Thursday after a long period of barringon-system balancing. However, storage volumes remain high in theJackson Prairie and Clay Basin facilities, limiting operationalflexibility, Northwest said.

The section of the El Paso Natural Gas South Mainline systemthat failed last weekend, killing 11 people and critically injuringone, had not been “properly inspected” in the 48 years since it wasfirst installed, said the chairman of the National TransportationSafety Board (NTSB) Thursday.

Over the weekend Florida Gas Transmission was finally able to endan Overage Alert Day notice for its market area that had been ineffect about a week and a half (see Daily GPI, July 13). However, the pipeline found itnecessary to issue a new OAD notice Monday, effective until furthernotice, with a 15% tolerance for negative daily imbalances.