East-West price tendencies remained at odds Monday. WhileEastern points ranged from flat to down as much as a nickel, theWest mostly was registering increases. Gains were particularlystrong in the California market, where Malin was up by nearly 15cents after PG&E had ended its weekend high-inventory OFO.

Transco’s Zone 6-NYC was a rare point in the East with a rise ofalmost a nickel. Very hot and muggy weather there gave gas prices aboost, according to a marketer. But assuming Hurricane Bonnie’swind and rain reach the area, “it will bring temperatures andprices back down with it,” he said. Short supply squeezes drove upprices late for both Zone 6 and Appalachia’s Columbia as a lot ofbuyers matched up with only a few sellers, another trader said.

Scattered and insignificant production outages were caused overthe weekend by Tropical Storm Charley before it weakened overinland Texas. A producer reported shutting in one well along theupper Texas coast for a day. Another source said he had heard of anew “non-essential” wells being taken off-line for short durations,mostly in the Mustang Island area offshore Texas.

Intra-Alberta quotes recovered a bit from Friday’s rout, “but itwas a roller-coaster ride,” a marketer said. Numbers started in themid C$1.50s, got as high as C$1.66, dropped to a low of C$1.47 andthen returned to the C$1.55 area in the afternoon, he said.

Heat and humidity in the Midwest had Consumers Energy appealingto customers to conserve electricity use. However, Michigancitygates were still trading at discounts of 2-5 cents fromChicago.

Amoco’s Hugoton Jayhawk processing plant was up to 378 MMcf/d ofthroughput around noon Monday. It had been processing about 400MMcf/d when a heat exchanger exploded last month and disabled theplant (see Daily GPI, July 10). “The new unit [heat exchangerreplacement] is working just fine,” a spokesman said.

New September basis talk as bidweek approached included: TranscoZone 6 plus 17-19; Columbia-Appalachia plus 12; and San Juan-Blancominus 15-17. One trader reported doing a Southern California borderdeal at the GPI index minus 0.25.

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