With California acting as the out-of-step market yet again,overall swing prices ranged from flat to moderately higher Monday,with Pacific Northwest points achieving gains of 12-20 cents. Awinter storm that developed over the Upper Plains during theweekend was moving eastward and was largely responsible for themild post-weekend rally, sources said.

As it often happens, what was going on in the general market hadlittle bearing on California numbers. While the Southern Californiaborder saw the day’s biggest advance by far of more than 70 cents,the PG&E citygate fell about a dime and Malin saw the day’sbiggest drop of about 60 cents. PG&E had a customer-specificlow-linepack OFO in place Monday, but the OFO was lifted fortoday’s gas day.

Despite a softer expiration-day screen, Midcontinent pricestended to move higher as trading proceeded in response to worseningmarket-area weather, a marketer said. The situation was similar atKaty, which started at $5.00 and ran north to $5.15 throughout themorning as short players covered their physical positions ratherthan using higher cash-out prices to settle end-of-monthimbalances, another trader said.

Exemplifying the current weather extremes and their effects onpipelines, Northern Natural Gas issued an OFO due to heavy demandfrom near-blizzard conditions in its market area. Meanwhile,Florida Gas Transmission told shippers that mild market-areaweather and rising linepack might cause it to declare an UnderageAlert Day notice today.

Bidweek numbers were dropping from pre-weekend levels, probablyin response to the March futures contract falling more than 13cents in its last day of trading, several sources noted. SouthernCalifornia border deals at $12.45-50 in the morning were down to$11.15-90 in late afternoon, according to a marketer.

A source reporting basis of plus 15-19 for Chicago expressedsurprise at a lack of fixed-price citygate deals. “So far I haven’tseen a single fixed-price quote for Chicago at all,” he said. GPIindex deals at the point ranged from index minus 1.5 to index plus0.5, he said.

Despite the scheduled refueling of two Texas nuclear units, aTexas trader remained fearful that prices would slide in the Marchaftermarket. For that reason he said he is flat to a little on theshort side heading into the month. “Winter is over, summer is stilla little ways off and California lost its [price] hype,” hecommented.

But a source in the Northeast market had a different outlook,saying, “I think we’re getting near the bottom of the market.” Justabout all the bear-favorable news is already out there and has beendigested, he added. “How much more bearish can you get? Januaryfutures settled at $9.98, and two months later we’ve lost almostexactly half of that value.” He predicted an early start to storageinjection season and said he doesn’t think Gulf Coast prices willget below $4 at any time this year.

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