Monday’s cash trading found support from record hightemperatures in the South and El Paso’s Blanco compressor stationoutage but were kept in check by softening futures prices. Mostspot market points managed modest gains of about 3-5 cents.Southwestern and Rockies points, however, logged gains of nearly adime.

“The Blanco outage is wreaking a little bit of a havoc,” awestern marketer said. The scheduled maintenance, which willcontinue for the next two days at the Blanco compressor station,curtailed close to 900 MMcf/d on Monday. The outage is expected tocurtail the same amount on Tuesday. “That’s keeping prices up outWest for the short term,” the marketer added. “Of all the gas goingWest, you have hardly any gas coming from San Juan, which in turncaused some California utilities to buy incremental Permian gas.”Permian traded near $2.10, up 9 cents from weekend pricing. Sourcesexpect cash prices at western points to come off in today’s tradingas more gas is expected to come back on line later in the week.Curtailments are scheduled to subside to about 500 MMcf/d onWednesday and 100 MMcf/d on Thursday.

Southern California prices, however, were not affected as muchby the San Juan curtailments. “Everyone tried to hype the outageand was showing $2.40 for southern California border out of theshoot this morning,” one source said. “But those numbers didn’t flyand what got done [in the high 2.20s and low 2.30s] really wasn’tmuch different from last week.” The source noted because this was ascheduled outage buyers already planned for it by buying extra gasfor the 1st through the 15th and moderate weather in California hasdampened demand.

Some of the effects from the San Juan outage filtered into theRockies, which also logged gains, according to an area trader. “Inaddition to the curtailments, I think prices bounced back afterbeing a little overdone on the downside for the weekend.”

Most Midcontinent, Louisiana and Texas points ran up 3-5 centson cooling demand. But prices began to soften toward nominationdeadlines, said a Gulf Coast marketer. “Despite high demand causedlargely by record-high temperatures across the southern part of thecountry, cash prices seemed to be contained by a softening Nymexscreen,” the trader noted. “A lot of people are still bearish [onNymex] for whatever reason.”

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