Prices continued to soften Friday but except for some steepdrops in the West, the weekend declines were considerably smallerthan many traders had been expecting.

A futures screen that was initially lower for much of themorning started rising in time to create late rallies at manypoints, sources said. A marketer thought the August futurescontract, which eventually settled nearly 20 cents higher, wasreacting to revised six-to-10-day weather forecasts indicatingabove-normal temperatures toward the end of this week over muchlarger and more densely populated areas of the U.S. than previouslypredicted. “It looks like we’ll have more weather load coming upthan we thought,” he said. “Our weather consultants now think it’sgoing to be a few degrees hotter than normal from the Chicago areato as far east as Philadelphia.”

The late screen spike, along with the weather forecastrevisions, prompted several traders to concur that cash prices willbegin rising again as early as today.

Softness was decidedly modest in the East as most points fell byabout a nickel. Citygates in the mild-weather Northeast were aboutthe only ones down by more than a nickel, with Transco’s two Zone 6pools being the primary eastern loss leaders.

California numbers, and to a lesser extent those in theRockies/Pacific Northwest and Southwest basins, were gettingbattered as PG&E extended a high-linepack OFO into a fourth daySaturday (see Transportation Notes). SoCal Gas once again managedto avoid an OFO of its own, but after seeing less weakness thanNorthern California pricing earlier in the week, SouthernCalifornia border quotes joined the PG&E citygate in droppingmore than 50 cents Friday in hypervolatile trading.

Activity was notably subdued in Calgary as quite a few traderstook off to watch the downtown parade that traditionally kicks offthe city’s Stampede rodeo. A marketer who stayed in the office saidhe was seeing “absolutely no effect” on Sumas prices from theannual turnaround outage that began Tuesday at Westcoast’s FortNelson Plant, even though it is taking more than 600 MMcf/d off themarket. “Obviously the market didn’t need that gas,” he said. Theplant will resume processing about 450 MMcf/d July 17, the marketersaid, and is scheduled to return to its full capacity of 600-plusMMcf/d July 24.

Another Calgary trader reported an intra-Alberta range ofC$4.44-52 for himself, but said prices extended to much higher andmuch lower on an electronic trading service. Since intra-Albertatrading goes on into the afternoon, it was able to track thescreen’s late spike more than other markets, he said.

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