The cash market made a strong rebound Monday from the weekend’sprice plunge as nearly every point rose by 15 cents or more. Inmost cases the gains did not recover all of the price territorythat had been lost Friday. However, the Northeast—one of the fewregions seeing any weather close to resemblingwinter —didmanage to make up for just about all of Friday’s citygate declines.

The screen seemed somewhat supportive of cash by overcominginitial softness to rise by over a dime by the time cash businesshad been completed. However, an afternoon meltdown, in which onetrader said he watched the December contract drop by almost a dimein just over 10 minutes, left futures down by more than 12 cents atthe end of the day, and the weakness was continuing in after-hoursAccess trading, a marketer said. That bodes ill for cash pricestoday, he said.

Transco Zone 6-NYC registered the day’s biggest gain by far of alittle over 40 cents. It ran up hard near the end with late quotesexceeding $3, one trader said. What had been a 7-cent premium overthe non-New York City Zone 6 pool increased to 17 cents Monday forZone 6-NYC. The trader thought some marketing companies hadmis-read the NYC-area market demand late last week and had to payup in covering their short positions Monday.

“Unless we get some weather soon, prices are going to start backdown again soon, especially after the screen’s late collapse,” aTexas-based producer said. A Rockies marketer tended to agree,saying the month of November was essentially already over to mostpeople as far as weather goes. “They’ve given up on this month’smarket,” he said. However, it should get considerably colder inDecember, he added.

There was a major disconnect of some Canadian-related tradingpoints from the rest of the market. Sumas, Stanfield andintra-Alberta were among the rare points declining by about anickel or so Monday. NOVA changed its daily imbalance tolerancethat morning to 0/-20% due to linepack of about 14 Bcf exceedingits current target level of 13.74 Bcf, a Calgary source said. Theaction didn’t have a lot of impact on Monday’s trading, she said,but likely will be more of a price depressant if it continuesthrough today. Temperatures reaching about 70 degrees F. in CalgaryMonday exacerbated the high-linepack problem.

Hurricane Lenny formed in the central Caribbean Sea over theweekend, but it was moving eastward away from the Gulf of Mexicoproduction area. As of midday Monday Lenny was about 250 milessouth-southeast of Kingston, Jamaica and expected to possiblythreaten Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands that night.

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