Cash market prices remained predominantly flat during Tuesday’strading session, mimicking a stagnant Nymex futures screen and heldfast by decreasing demand nationwide. Aside from major Northeasternmarkets, which almost doubled Monday’s declines, cash continuedflat to a penny lower at most trading points.

Cash prices at Transco Zone 6 and Tetco M3 lost about a dimefrom the day prior. “Moderating temperatures took a quick and fasttoll on cash prices out here,” said a Northeast marketer. “We havegone from snowstorm conditions over the weekend to 50-degreeweather in one day,” he added.

A Midcontinent trader, who reported area prices flat in thelow-to-mid-$1.60s, said there was very little support for cash ineither direction during the day. “The market floundered, waitingfor Nymex to give some sort of a signal, but that didn’t happen,”the trader said. In addition, there certainly isn’t much demand outthere, he added. “We [had] 73-degree weather in Tulsa [Tuesday]. Ialso talked with one of my utility customers in Minnesota and hereported 55 degrees over there.” He said his customer had reducedhis loads by 30% since Sunday, and does not anticipate increasingthem for the rest of the month.

Absent the board doing something crazy, according to one source,cash is going to stay at current levels, if not go down. “However,If the board decides to go rocketing up, which is unlikely, whoknows where cash goes,” he said. “In any case, I don’t know that[cash] is going to get much cheaper.”

While Western and California border markets held Tuesday, onemarketer said he held back on buying gas in anticipation of lowerprices today. “There’s a lot of gas out West, and there isn’t muchdemand at the border, which brought our loads down,” he explained.”While we saw prices flat out here [Tuesday], which was largely dueto balancing requirements, I think we’ll start noticing softness[today] and going into the weekend.”

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