It’s a huge understatement to say that Tuesday’s market was rather featureless. Try virtually non-existent instead, which was to be expected on Christmas Eve.

NGI did manage to reach a Calgary-based source who did intra-Alberta deals Tuesday. Despite a news service reporting flat numbers in the mid C$6.30s, she said her first package was down about a dime from Monday to the mid C$6.20s, while the second fell into the high C$6.10s. What little market there was must have been quite weak, she said, because an online platform had declined to C$6.01 in its final posting. “Right now there’s a whole bunch of offers out there, but no bids. That tells you people don’t want to go long into the holiday.” Some of the price weakness may have been due to the area warming up a little from sub-freezing levels to just above zero degrees Celsius, the source said.

An aggregator also had a small amount of Tuesday trading for Thursday-only flows to quote. Its New England citygates via Algonquin and Tennessee ranged from $5.30 to $5.80, while a Dominion North Point package was in the mid $5.40s.

But a Midcontinent marketer was more typical in saying, “There’s nothing out there. We couldn’t find any trading activity at all.”

A Rockies trader said someone told him a popular online service had listed potential trades, but he was unsuccessful in several attempts at logging on. He commented, “It’s ludicrous for Nymex to make some of us work today.”

Nymex barely stirred in its truncated session, at least in natural gas futures, which wavered within a penny or so up or down from flat for most of the morning, before making a small late charge up into the mid $5.10s. There was a little more excitement in the crude oil pit, where the continuing supply worries over Iraq and Venezuela caused the February contract to explore the plus side of $32/bbl for a bit. Although it traded as low as $30.78 at another point, February crude managed to gain 22 cents to close at $31.97. Heating oil futures also continued to rise.

Winter precipitation ensured that Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle, the Mid-Atlantic, upper elevations in the West and parts of the Lower Midwest would have a white Christmas. Meanwhile, a moisture-laden system was moving northward from the Mid-Atlantic, making it likely that the Northeast would join the other regions in having snow on the ground Wednesday.

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