Cash prices continued to rise at most points Tuesday, boosted by a futures spike a day earlier and whatever heating or cooling load they could find in various areas. Perhaps in recognition that overall weather-based demand is still on the light side, in nearly all cases the gains were considerably smaller than Monday’s all-points rebound.

Declines of a little less than a dime to a little more than 30 cents at four points, mostly in the Rockies, restored mixed price movement to the market. Gains ranged from a little less than a dime to about 55 cents. Most of the largest upticks were concentrated in the Gulf Coast and at Northeast and Midwest citygates.

Natural gas futures appear to have finally made a disconnect again from Nymex’s crude oil contract. While crude was going on to establish still more all-time highs Tuesday (see related story), June gas futures will provide slightly negative guidance for Wednesday’s cash market. After staying in positive territory for much of the day, June gas finally succumbed for an eventual loss of 2.8 cents Tuesday.

After starting the May aftermarket with virtually all points trading at deficits to first-of-month indexes, the price firmness of Monday and Tuesday means that several scattered points are now ranging from flat to about 20 cents above index. However, deficits to index are still in effect for a large majority of the market.

Texas Eastern-East Texas was conspicuous in the Gulf Coast by retreating a little more than 30 cents in the midst of surrounding firmness. It may have been related to a cleaning outage of Line 11, which has caused Texas Eastern to restrict and seal nominations sourced in the East Texas zone for delivery outside that area. No increases in receipts between Huntsville (northwest of Houston) and Little Rock, AR, for delivery outside that area will be accepted, the pipeline said.

The Florida citygate led Tuesday’s uptrend and Florida Gas Zone 3 recorded one of the second-biggest gains after Florida Gas Transmission issued an Overage Alert Day (see Transportation Notes).

Wednesday’s reopening of MRT’s West Line following a one-day outage (see Daily GPI, April 30) had essentially no impact on thinly traded prices into the pipe. In fact, the pipeline has a System Protection Warning in place due to high linepack and no storage injection capacity (see Transportation Notes). MRT was up about 20 cents Tuesday, less than all other Louisiana points.

Much of the Deep South will record high temperatures in the 80s Wednesday, contributing some air conditioning load to the gas market. The desert Southwest is joining Florida in approaching the 90-degree level. And after a warming period the Rockies are turning cooler again, although not by much as Denver is expected to peak at 60 Wednesday with a low in the low 40s.

Otherwise, it must be assumed that futures support and storage injection purchases were the chief reasons for higher quotes Tuesday because predicted highs in the 70s for most of the Midwest and Northeast (except in sections along the Canadian border) fail to indicate a significant amount of heating load in northern market areas.

It’s getting a little hotter, a utility buyer in the South said, but not enough yet that the utility has had to supplement its summer term supplies with spot gas so far in May. He said a constraint on Trunkline between Katy and Kountze in southeast Texas meant he had to find other receipt points for one term contract temporarily. The problem could have been solved easily by making purchases in Louisiana, but the gas costs more there, the buyer said, so he went farther upstream on Trunkline toward South Texas instead.

The National Weather Service (NWS) expects below-normal temperatures during the May 12-16 workweek in a large part of the Lower 48 states that includes all of the Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, Plains and Midcontinent, and all of the Northeast except the northeast half of Maine. The below-normal area also extends southward far enough to include the northern portions of the Gulf Coast state from Texas through Alabama along with the northern half of Georgia and most of South Carolina. Below-normal readings also are predicted in the northwest corner of Washington state. NWS looks for above-normal temperatures in a western swath that includes all of Nevada; most of Arizona, California, Oregon and Idaho; and in eastern Washington state and western Montana.

Analyst Stephen Smith of Stephen Smith Energy Associates is projecting a storage build of 67 Bcf for the week ending May 2, which was a big increase from his earlier estimate of 51 Bcf. Citigroup’s Tim Evans said he looks for injections of 60 Bcf, 85 Bcf and 75 Bcf for the weeks ending May 2, May 9 and May 16, respectively.

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