In the hodgepodge of trading for split weekend periods Friday,little trend was evident other than the October aftermarket wasstarting out below indexes in nearly all cases. However, a fellownamed Keith could play a large part in reversing the generallysofter market as early as today.

While Hurricane Isaac and Tropical Storm Joyce remained well outin the Atlantic and inconsequential to the gas market, of much moreimmediate interest was the strengthening of Tropical Depression 15into Tropical Storm Keith in the northwestern Caribbean Sea. Keithwas about 300 miles south of the western end of Cuba and driftingnorthwestward late Friday afternoon, prompting Mexico to issue ahurricane watch along the east coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, theNational Weather Service said. NWS expected Keith to turn moretoward the north-northwest and potentially become a hurricane overthe weekend.

Traders had several fronts to cover Friday: taking care of anylast-day October baseload business along with doing some swingdeals for Saturday-only and others for Sunday-Monday. Quite a fewhad taken care of the split weekend issue by trading Thursday forFriday-Saturday flow.

Chicago was very quiet for the last day of September with littleactivity, a large marketer observed. He and a producer, however,agreed that the Oct. 1-2 period was marked with considerablyheavier trading and a volatile price slide. The marketer, whoreported citygates starting at $5.40 and dropping into the $5.10s,said it seemed like the supply situation was very long, and coupledwith very moderate Midwest weather for the weekend, that had pricesfalling throughout the session. However, the producer, after makinghis last sale at $5.17, said he detected a small late rebound intothe low to mid $5.20s by buyers caught short.

Similarly, a western trader said PG&E citygate gas forSunday-Monday began the day trading flat to Sept. 30 numbers, butthen fell off as extra supplies became available and extra buyersdidn’t.

A few frost predictions for Saturday morning failed to keepNortheast citygates from softening because temperatures wereexpected to rebound as the weekend went on. Early-October prices inthe region tended to be a few cents down from Saturday numbers.

The Rockies/San Juan market was a rare one to see prices risingfrom Saturday into early October. The firming likely was due toarea transportation constraints, one real and the other a falsealarm, one source said. Transwestern continued to allocate its SanJuan Lateral due to nominations exceeding capacity. However, a16-hour outage of El Paso’s Line 1100 from Eunice Station to PecosRiver Station that had been scheduled for Sunday wasn’t postponedby the pipeline until Friday afternoon, well after the day’s swingbusiness had been completed.

Despite Northwest’s entitlement for the northern end of itssystem, domestic gas actually showed a bit of strength for theweekend, a marketer said. The San Juan-Rockies spread was wideningdramatically, he continued, so many traders saw that as a goodopportunity to take more Rockies gas south into El Paso.

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