The swing market achieved a fairly substantial recovery Monday from weekend softness. Advances ranged from about a nickel at a couple of South Texas points to more than 30 cents in the Southwest basins. Most were in double digits between a dime and a quarter.

Weekend cold fronts left the Midwest and Northeast feeling less like spring had arrived than they had late last week. Even the South was feeling a bit more coolish than before, and lows in the 30s had returned to the Rockies. Yet neither a Gulf Coast marketer nor a Northeast buyer put much stock in colder weather as a major factor in Monday’s rally. “I don’t think it was so much colder weather pushing cash higher, but coming back from the weekend drop in demand more than anything else,” the marketer said.

The Northeast source said regional demand, especially among utilities, was stronger Monday, but he also didn’t see lower temperatures as a major cause. Some people might think it’s gotten colder than what was forecast, he added, “but conditions are about where we had expected.” He concurred with the marketer that restoration of industrial load that had been pared for the weekend played a role, and also pointed to Friday’s screen gain of nearly 6 cents as having provided a support base for Monday’s cash market.

Many of Monday’s biggest gains were recorded in the West, which had seen the bulk of Friday’s softening. However, returning heat in the desert Southwest and unexpected power plant outages prompted the California Independent System Operator to declare a Stage One power alert Monday afternoon (see story in Power Market Today). The alert did not require any power constraints and came well after cash gas trading had closed for the day, but was an indicator of growing demand for gas-fired generation.

Two hints of linepack stabilization surfaced in the West. Westcoast, which had encouraged packing of its system last week due to low supplies, returned to normal imbalance tolerances Monday (see Transportation Notes). And Kern River, while still reporting high linepack in three segments, said the Muddy Creek-to-Elberta section was normal again.

Saying April prices were “just a tad higher” Monday than on Friday, a marketer perceived bidweek business as seeming “very slow” for a futures expiration day. A lot of seasonal maintenance on pipes, which tends to be fairly heavy during spring, is coming up, he noted, but otherwise the transportation situation is routine.

A Northeast trader also thought April activity was remaining “sporadic” Monday, when he thought it should be picking up with April futures going off the board. Northeast basis was running 40-70 cents over the screen, “depending on the point,” he said. In general regional basis had come off “about a penny” from Friday, he said.

A Southern utility buyer said he had made no purchases yet for April, but might still pick up something. He commented that he was finding it “tough shopping” for April supplies. He was glad to see prices coming down from March index levels but “hoping for them to fall even further,” so his company planned on trying to wait the market out.

Lehman Brothers analyst Thomas Driscoll is predicting a storage withdrawal of 20 Bcf for the week ending March 26, which would compare with a year-earlier injection of 36 Bcf.

Meanwhile, Kyle Cooper of Citigroup lowered his final estimation of the report to a draw of 23-33 Bcf, down from the initial projection of “somewhere between 30 and 40 Bcf.” Cooper said the downward revision was based on “temperature and pipeline data [that] suggested a slightly smaller withdrawal.”

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