A trio of supportive influences — heating load expected to remain ample for a while longer across Canada and much of the U.S.; the previous Friday’s gain of 12.7 cents by January futures; and the return of industrial load from its typical weekend recess — pushed cash prices to double-digit increases across the board Monday.

The Rockies and Northeast citygates appeared to have a slight edge on recording the largest gains, but generally the advance was spread pretty evenly across market areas. Gains ranged from about 15 cents to half a dollar or so.

Cash numbers will have even greater screen backing Tuesday after the prompt-month gas contract tacked on another 38.5 cents Monday despite weakness in Nymex’s petroleum-based offerings (see related notes).

The first major winter storm of the season will affect much of the U.S. Tuesday, according to The Weather Channel. Although a few parts of the South will not get below the 40s and 50s (and 60s in a few cases), lows in the 30s, 20s and teens will dominate the rest of the outlook.

Despite the severe low temperatures across much of North America, OFOs and other cold-related pipeline restrictions remained in hiding through Monday.

Although it did not do so, NOVA said Monday it might be required to change its system imbalance tolerances due to supply-demand differentials leading to low linepack. And Northwest reported experiencing “excessive” shipper drafting of its system over the past several days.

With the long-range forecast “looking pretty cold” for most of December and January and additional prior-day futures backing, a Texas-based marketer considered it a pretty safe bet that cash prices will keep going up Tuesday. Chicago “should get very cold” later this week, he noted. Contrary to some perceptions, he does not think very many people are dipping into storage significantly yet.

The marketer said he was not surprised to see the natural gas screen strength Monday while petroleum-based futures dropped; gas fundamentals currently are stronger than those of oil, he said.

Gas throughput is currently very high due to temperatures in the teens at night and the 20s during the day, a Midwest utility buyer said. A large amount of snow — “possibly a blizzard” — is expected to hit his area through Wednesday, he said. It won’t get much warmer going into the weekend, he added, but at least the frozen precipitation will be ending. Local conditions may be personally uncomfortable, he said, but they’re good for the utility business.

Because of a wet fall in the Midwest, his utility still has one agricultural customer ordering gas for crop drying load, the buyer said. The customer said such demand might last as late as February, which is quite unusual, he noted, because normally local farm interests finish drying crops around the end of November.

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