What

State hearings began this week in Sacramento on what could bethe first of more than a dozen new natural gas-fired merchant powerplants built in California in the first years of the next century.A 500 MW, $300 million electric power plant in northern California,the Sutter Power Project sponsored by San Jose, CA-based Calpine,is expected to complete public hearings before the CaliforniaEnergy Commission (CEC) before Thanksgiving, gain a proposeddecision by late December and a final approval for construction inMarch 1999, according to Roger Johnson, CEC siting program manager.

TransCanada PipeLines and Nicor Inc. have dropped their plans toproceed with what was to have been a revised Voyageur pipeline dueto a lack of commitments from Midwest shippers that would have beenserved by the project.

In what a few sources described as some of the quietest tradingthey had seen in quite a while, cash quotes fell anywhere from 2cents to a dime or so at Eastern points Monday. In contrast,numbers were generally flat to slightly higher for the Rockies,Southwest basins, California and intra-Alberta.

Expectations often differ from what actually comes to fruitionin the volatile arena of natural gas futures, and yesterday thatpoint was driven home when a bullish combination of slow-to-resumesupply outages met with a smaller-than-expected storage refill.Traders chased the market higher most of the day, and advances inthe evening computer trading Access session nearly matched theregular pit-trading gains. The November contract received thelargest boost, rocketing 16.8 cents to post a final trade of $2.515last night after briefly settling at $2.433 earlier in the day.

Hurricane Georges roared through a deserted eastern Gulf of Mexico today, the fifth of what has been an alphabet soup of named storms to hit in four of the last five weeks, once again sending producers scurrying for shore, shutting in production or putting wells on automatic pilot.

What was non-strategic to Union Pacific Resources (UPR) provedto be a good fit with core business for Enron Oil and Gas (EOG).UPR sold its 19% non-operated working interest in the MatagordaIsland Block 623 Field and surrounding blocks to Enron Oil and Gasfor $158 million. The deal will close Aug. 31 with an effectivedate of June 1.

For the second week in a row, the futures market was unable tobuild on advances posted early in the week, and after the Septembercontract flirted with, but did not break through resistanceTuesday, again came under significant selling pressure that leftthe prompt month down 8.3 cents to settle at $1.812.

The futures market made gains for the second day in a rowTuesday on what many sources are calling a bit of a technicalcorrection in an otherwise down market. That left the Septembercontract hovering within striking distance of the downtrend linethat has thwarted upward momentum since July 9. September finishedup 2.6 cents to settle at 1.895.

The futures market concluded what one trader described as a”tumultuous trading week” by slipping for the fifth straight day,leaving futures at their lowest level since March 1997. There was alittle something for everyone in the market last week: speculativeselling, a bullish storage report, and even a little hurricanehype. The only thing missing from trading last week was a dayregistering a gain. That left even the most bullish of tradersscratching their horns wondering when the market will reverse itsdowntrend. The September contract closed at $1.844 on Friday, down6.2 cents. Friday’s With that, the market concluded the month ofJuly. A month that saw major declines in both cash and futuresmarkets eroding the September contract nearly 30 percent of itsJuly 1 value.