A slow and undistinctive trading session Thursday yielded amixed bag of prices that leaned mostly to the slightly softer side.The small declines tended to occur mainly at Eastern points, whilethe West generally was flat to a little higher. Sources continuedto chant the litany of “no weather, no demand.”

Despite PG&E’s extension of a high-linepack OFO throughtoday, the PG&E citygate achieved the day’s biggest gain of aabout a nickel.

Noting the renewed weakness in Gulf Coast pricing, a Texastrader said people have been “parking gas on the pipe” in hopesprices would rise but they were being disappointed. For him, TexasEastern-West Louisiana was the only point with any strengthThursday, and that was due to a bit of supply shortness in thepool, he said.

A marketer regretted having some gas turned back to her late dueto imbalances, forcing her back into the market 45 minutes beforethe 11:30 CT deadline. At that time she was only able to fetch$1.86 for an ANR-Southeast package, about a dime below the day’saverage. NGPL volumes were being ratcheted down because oflimitations imposed on market-area storage injections, the marketersaid.

The Rockies/Pacific Northwest market is rather illiquid,according to a Calgary source. Not only is Northwest Pipelineholding a shipper meeting in Salt Lake City, she said, but theupcoming Canadian Thanksgiving Day holiday Monday has promptedquite a few traders to make multi-day deals to cover theirpositions through Tuesday.

With trading activity running slowly, sources had time to ponderthe weekend outlook and whether the screen’s drop of nearly 14cents would have any bearing on it. With Gulf Coast cash hoveringjust under $2, November futures closed the basis gap from 35 centsto about a quarter, a marketer noted.

Another source felt it isn’t that unusual to have a largefutures-cash chasm during the month of October. “This time of yearthere should be a fairly big gap; it’s a shoulder month [Octobercash] compared to a start-of-winter month [November futures],” hesaid. He doesn’t expect much convergence until near the end of themonth.

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