The first three Mondays in March consistently saw rebounds from weekend softness (although the gains were rather mild a couple of times and didn’t quite extend to all points in one case). The fourth time was the charm for cash market bears, though, as quotes Monday (March 28) extended the move lower that had been launched on the previous Wednesday and Thursday.

The reason for the demise of the succession of week-opening rallies was obvious. The previous Mondays could depend on fairly substantial amounts of heating load in northern, western and at times southern market areas as winter extended its icy reach through most of March (in the process “confirming” the groundhog’s Feb. 2 prognostication skills).

But the latest Monday’s trading couldn’t count on that fundamental support, with most of the remaining cold having receded into the Pacific Northwest/Western Canada and Northeast/Eastern Canada. Not coincidentally, those regions also tended to be the wettest ones Monday. And what cold remained wasn’t especially severe, only occasionally approaching freezing levels.

The result was that most of Monday’s declines were in double digits, with the overall range extending from a couple of pennies to a little more than a quarter. The Rockies and Northeast recorded most of the losses of 20 cents or more, while South Texas and East Texas tended to see the most drops of less than a dime. That might have been because air conditioners are likely to be getting fired up Tuesday in the Lone Star state; highs in the 80s were predicted for most of Texas and could approach 90 degrees in the Rio Grande Valley, according to The Weather Channel.

Cash traders can’t look to the screen for any price backing Tuesday. All of Nymex’s energy products were down Monday, with April natural gas futures falling 6.3 cents to just a tad under $7 ($6.999, to be exact) on their last day before expiration.

A couple of northern marketers would have liked to declare the 2004-05 winter finished in their respective market areas, but perhaps in fear of jinxing themselves they declined to do so. “I’d be hesitant” to say declare winter is over, said a Midwest source, but added that she was “excited about the next couple of days, which are supposed to be very nice,” much like the weekend had been. She confessed to having had a few bouts of cabin fever this past winter. Commenting on the market continuing downward Monday, she noted that prices were “finally responding to fundamentals the way you’d expect them to.”

Unlike the Midwest marketer’s currently “nice” weather, one in the lower Northeast had more reason to hold off on any pronouncements of winter’s end. “It’s still pretty nasty, chilly and wet here,” he told NGI. Maybe later this week his region would be getting into the 60s, but the thermometer was on either side of 50 degrees Monday afternoon, he said. Transportation on pipes to the Northeast is wide open right now, but it won’t be long before spring maintenance starts putting up constraints here and there again, he noted.

The marketer continued that his company was still slow getting going on April business. Lately it’s seemed more like “bid day” than bidweek, he said, “and for us that day is probably Tuesday.” Of course, some people still spread trading baseload for the next month over several days, and others might not all pick the same “bid day” on which to make their deals, he observed.

A Texas-based trader reported this sampling of April deals done Monday: Northern Natural-demarc at $6.70; Southern Star Central (formerly Williams) in the mid $6.50s; Transwestern West Texas from the low to mid $6.30s; and Panhandle Eastern in the low $6.50s. She noted that daily cash numbers were “really weak in comparison to next month.” For example, she traded swing demarc for Tuesday in the $6.40-50 range, 20 cents or more below her April quote. It didn’t matter to her company whether the screen kept falling into expiration Tuesday because “we just trade around our transportation spreads.” The trader said she was “really enjoying this fine Texas weather we had over the weekend,” which looked like it would continue for a while.

The fact that some residents of the Northeast “enjoyed” a white Easter due to a small snowstorm striking before the holiday weekend reinforced Weather 2000’s “opinion that northern-tier snow pack and very chilly Atlantic ocean temperatures will still permit raw, cool weather to hang around and make new appearances in April.” However, for the majority of central and eastern States, “the end of the dominating blocking regime has finally come, accelerating cross-longitudinal flow, and eventually infusing the nation with much milder and pleasant April-like temperatures,” the New York City-based consulting firm said. “Milder weather over the next few weeks should still be viewed as reduced HDDs [heating degree days] and not increased CDDs [cooling degree days], and one mustn’t forget that April is still a winter month for the West and not to draw any correlations to the 2005 summer.”

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