As the screen giveth, so can the screen taketh away. That was the gist of opinion about substantially higher cash prices Tuesday that are expected to be followed by equally substantial declines in Wednesday’s quotes.

Upticks Tuesday ranged from about a nickel to a little more than 30 cents, with a clear majority in double digits. They were largely attributed to the prior-day gain of nearly 7 cents by May natural gas futures, with a little credit being given to moderately chillier weather in the Northeast and northerly sections of the West.

But with temperatures in the Northeast and upper West not being much below seasonal norms and weather elsewhere staying mild, a sharp screen reversal Tuesday was considered likely to drag the physical market lower Wednesday. And even with people continuing to buy new production for storage injection purposes, high comfort levels with current inventories are another bearish factor in the market.

In dropping 21.5 cents Tuesday, the May screen took back much more than it had risen Monday. And it was accompanied by plunges in Nymex’s petroleum product trading pits. Crude oil for May delivery plummeted nearly $2 to $51.86/bbl — a seven-week low — after the International Energy Agency said China’s growing energy demand was unlikely to be as strong as previously expected.

The advance by Chicago citygate numbers (up 20 cents) was even stronger than a marketer had expected Monday. But if Tuesday’s screen trend held up during overnight Access activity, he said he would expect Chicago quotes to be down about a quarter Wednesday to around the mid $6.90s. “If futures open lower tomorrow [Wednesday], it might take the average even lower than that,” the marketer said.

As the week began, it appeared that significant generation load for air conditioning might be surfacing soon in the South, but as of Tuesday such anticipation was put on hold for a while longer. According to The Weather Channel, only the southern ends of Florida and Texas could expect peak temperatures as high as the 80s Wednesday.

Just as Tuesday’s total outage of the primary Transwestern interconnect with SoCalGas had relatively little impact on Transwestern production-area prices Monday, so did the return of its availability Wednesday not mean much to traders. Transwestern-West Texas quotes rose about 20 cents Tuesday, which was in line with other gains in the Permian Basin area.

Lehman Brothers analyst Thomas Driscoll forecasted a storage injection of 35 Bcf to be reported for the week ending April 8.

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