Flatness or small declines of about a nickel or less dominated the market Wednesday. Sharply higher San Juan/Rockies numbers, along with mild firmness at Northern California points, constituted the primary exceptions to the overall price trend.

Softening had been expected due to forecasts of milder market area weather and the screen’s belated downturn Tuesday. Look for more of the same Thursday after gas futures, which stayed around the vicinity of flat for a while after a delayed opening due to the Sept. 11 commemorations, closed more than a dime lower, a Gulf Coast producer said.

The producer observed that cash traders got no input from the screen at all because of the late Nymex start. Quotes started out slightly lower “and didn’t really move anywhere,” contributing to fairly tight ranges, he said.

Several sources concurred that the numerous memorial ceremonies related to the year-ago terrorist attacks kept market activity very quiet.

Air conditioning load is dropping off almost everywhere, a Houston-based trader said. About the only patches of significant heat remaining are in the Gulf Coast states and the desert Southwest, although with high temperatures in the 80s, the Pacific Northwest is running above seasonal norms, he added.

A marketer, quoting close-to-flat Transco Zone 6-NYC deals in the low $3.60s, said his company and likely others were starting to idle some of their gas-fired power plants in the Northeast because of temperatures cooling off. He added that “a couple of people called wanting to talk about October business, but I told them we’re not ready to get into that yet.”

Western markets appeared to be rather mysterious Wednesday. A utility buyer, saying “I have no idea why,” noted that Opal started trading as low as 55 cents but ended the day over a dollar. The Opal Plant is having some problems with water content in Jonah Field production (see Transportation Notes), she said, but the accompanying supply reductions didn’t seem big enough to push Kern River and Northwest so much higher.

Similarly, a marketer remarked that “there’s no special reason that we can put our finger on” about why San Juan quotes zoomed higher. Some maintenance constraints in the basin on both El Paso and Transwestern are continuing, but she wasn’t aware of any significant change in them due Thursday.

Gustav became the first official hurricane of the 2002 Atlantic season but was a non-factor in the gas market. It was heading northeastward off the East Coast and expected to approach the Canadian Maritimes provinces Wednesday night, according to the National Weather Service. Gustav would become extratropical there and start to fade as it enters colder waters. However, the Weather Channel noted that forecasters are taking interest in an area of showers and thunderstorms in the Gulf of Mexico where a new tropical disturbance could be forming. Hurricane hunter planes will check out the area Thursday, the Weather Channel said.

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