Tuesday’s cash market bore a resemblance to the one preceding it in that all points achieved further gains, and most of them were strong. However, the Western Canada locations of Empress and AECO C failed to surpass the dime level, preventing a second day of solid double-digit advances.

A large majority of upticks continued to be in the 20s, with overall gains ranging from a little less than C5 cents to about 35 cents. The screen had repeated strong prior-day support for physical prices with May futures increasing 19.1 cents Monday. However, whether the cash market can sustain its early-week bullishness will be in doubt Wednesday after the prompt-month contract retreated by 18.1 cents Tuesday (see related story).

Weather-based demand is also waning in some areas. Although some parts of the eastern South will continue to see moderate heating load with highs in the low 80s, a lot of it will be easing in the vicinity of the Mississippi River and to the west as peak temperatures sink back into the 70s Wednesday. The Northeast will make up for that lost load to some extent as highs from the low to mid 80s are predicted from Boston through New York City and on to Philadelphia; however, such temperatures tend not to boost gas demand in the Northeast as they do in the South.

Meanwhile, readings that had approached 80 in some Midwest cities Tuesday will be in hasty retreat Wednesday; for example, Chicago’s peak is due to drop from 78 to around 60. And while freezing lows are still in the Rockies forecast, the rest of the West is returning to conditions ranging from merely cool to warm.

An analyst partially confirmed that some of the recent gas price strength has derived from replacing power generation idled while nuclear units undergo spring maintenance and refueling. He said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had reported that about 24,000 MW out of a total 100,266 MW of nuclear capacity, or nearly 25%, is currently experiencing downtime.

There’s a lot of warm weather arriving “ahead of schedule” (that is, earlier than usual) in the Upper Midwest, a marketer in the region said. Plants are budding all over town, she said, which of course makes for a slow gas market and reduced spot purchases. However, she was glad to leave the winter behind. Things might get a little chilly again before May arrives, she said, but no significant blasts of cold are in sight.

She reported hearing that Consumers Energy was telling customers that upstream pipelines ANR and Trunkline, while not in distress, were having problems with excessive linepack issues.

The National Weather Service (NWS) expects above-normal temperatures to dominate the eastern outlook for the April 12-16 workweek. In its six- to 10-day forecast posted Tuesday afternoon, the agency predicted such conditions throughout the Northeast and Midwest and extending south to a line running westward from southern Georgia to the northeast corner of Texas before swerving to the north-northeast to encompass nearly all of Oklahoma and Kansas along with the eastern halves of Nebraska and the Dakotas. Below-normal readings will prevail throughout the West west of a line running along the western edge of Montana into central Colorado and eastern Colorado, NWS said. It also looks for below-normal temperatures in the southern half of Texas, in a thin strip along the coast of Louisiana and in all of Florida except the western Panhandle.

Strategic Energy & Economic Research analyst Ron Denhardt is projecting a storage build of 27 Bcf for the week ending April 2. Stephen Smith of Stephen Smith Energy Association looks for an addition of 31 Bcf, which he said was up from a previous estimate of 24 Bcf. And Citi Futures Perspective’s Tim Evans, while calling for an even higher injection of 35 Bcf in Thursday’s report, said he expects builds to jump to 80 Bcf and 65 Bcf for the weeks ending April 9 and April 16, respectively.

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