Monday’s market was a reversal of the price trends seen Friday:now it was the East getting softer while most of the West reboundedfrom its weekend declines.

An August futures contract that dipped below $4 at one point andsettled nearly 15 cents lower got most of the credit or blame,depending on one’s point of view, for eastern cash prices thatmostly dropped by either side of a nickel. And although severe hotweather is stretching from the Southeast into the desert Southwestand even into parts of the Rockies and Pacific Northwest, it’srelatively mild temperatures in the more price-strategic Midwestand Northeast market areas that failed to support eastern cashnumbers, sources said.

But the fuel buyer for an electric utility in the Southacknowledged that “we’ve been buying quite a lot of gas lately, butthat’s to be expected when your service area is experiencingtemperatures around 100 degrees. We’ve got all our solid fuel unitsgoing and have cranked up our gas peakers.”

The weekend passed with no OFOs issued by the big CaliforniaLDCs, so it was no surprise when western markets rallied Monday.The PG&E citygate, which had seen Friday’s biggest loss of aquarter, regained all that price ground and more. In fact, with theSouthern California border gaining only about a nickel, thecitygate rise of a little more than 40 cents had it averaging lessthan a dime below the border after trading more than 40 cents lowerfor the weekend.

Westcoast’s Fort Nelson Plant was scheduled to put abouttwo-thirds of its capacity, or more than 400 MMcf/d, back into themarket Monday as it began ramping back up from an annual turnaroundoutage that began July 4. However, the plant was only up to about120 MMcf/d as of mid-morning, according to a plant hotlinespokesman. It was having trouble with its acid gas treater and alsolimited by pollution levels, he said.

Even without the extra supplies that had been anticipated, Sumasand Stanfield were rare Rockies/Pacific Northwest points inexperiencing lower prices. Westcoast apparently already had moregas on-system than it wanted, since it posted a daily imbalancetolerance range of +5%/-15% for today’s gas day. Intra-Alberta,already depressed by a soft screen, likely also felt some impactfrom the returning Fort Nelson capacity as it dropped more than C25cents into the C$4.40s, a marketer said.

A utility buyer said he was hearing preliminary guesses in themid 80s [Bcf] for this week’s AGA storage injection report.

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