Cash prices started out Tuesday playing catch-up with the Nymexscreen’s late increases on Monday, but wound up either flat or withsmall gains after futures reversed field. Only supply-constrainedSumas managed an increase of more than about 4 cents, and numberswere down a few cents on some Rockies pipes and at NorthernCalifornia market points.

The Appalachian pipes were trading just below Transco Zone 6citygates as much of the normal basis disappeared. “TCO followedthe [Monday] screen up but Zone 6 didn’t,” a marketer noted.

Now that the Hugoton Jayhawk Plant is in the process ofrestoring throughput lost in an explosion last month, Williams (theplant’s sole pipeline outlet) is starting to lose some of the pricepremium it experienced during the outage, a marketer said.

Even with the Chaco processing plant restoring some flow today,continuing supply shortness kept San Juan-Blanco trading nearPermian Basin levels for much of Tuesday, a source said. However,after El Paso suspended an OFO, Blanco prices that had been as highas $1.90 earlier fell into the low $1.80s, he added. Opal pricesalso were edging lower as trading proceeded, a marketer reported.

Sumas numbers spiked into the low $1.70s due to the supplydouble-whammy of outages today at the Fort Nelson Plant and AitkenCreek storage facilities on the Westcoast system. However, look forSumas to be retreating today as both facilities will be restoringat least partial flows Thursday, a marketer said.

Little development has shown up in September cash business sofar, one source said, but he looks for the prompt-month futurescontract to continue to be technically driven. He saw a sign of gassoftness in fuel-on-fuel competition as crude oil futures dippedbelow $13/bbl Tuesday. Another trader sees lower September pricingas the reason for San Juan-Blanco/Southern California border basisnarrowing to about 34 cents. This gives utilities an incentive topull from storage now and replace the supplies with cheaperSeptember gas, he said.

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