Outside of heat across the southern tier of states, the cash market could find little new fundamental support upon its emergence Tuesday from the holiday weekend. But due to spikes throughout the energy futures complex being ignited by further weekend violence in the Middle East, traders anticipate large gains in physical gas numbers Wednesday.

The Midcontinent and West got a head start on Wednesday’s expected strength by racking up increases ranging from a little less than a dime to about 20 cents Tuesday. There were a few moderate losses in the rest of the East, mostly in the cool-weather Northeast, but most non-Midcontinent points were flat to about a nickel higher.

The primary impetus for skyrocketing numbers among Nymex’s energy products came from a Saturday-Sunday taking of hostages in a Saudi oil operations center that ended with 22 being killed during a rescue raid by the kingdom’s security forces. No production infrastructure was targeted by the hostage-takers, believed to be part of the al-Qaeda terrorist group, but their attack heightened oil traders’ worries about western oil workers leaving Saudi Arabia and the possibility that subsequent terrorist activity could strike a lethal blow to global supplies from the only OPEC nation seen as capable of significantly boosting its output.

The natural gas screen rose 23.9 cents, mostly under the influence of the spectacular advances among the oil-related contracts. July crude soared by nearly two and a half dollars to the highest daily settlement ever of $42.33/bbl in the contract’s 21-year trading history. That was after hitting a record intraday peak of $42.38.

Although high temperatures from the low 100s in the desert Southwest to the 90s from Texas through the Southwest are making their contribution to air conditioning load for gas, weather-related demand is weak elsewhere.

There’s very little heating load in most of the Northeast right now, said a regional marketer, “and we’re not likely to get above the mid 70s for the rest of this week.” But noting Tuesday’s huge increases in energy futures, he saw it as a safe bet to expect “at least a good 20 cents up or more at Henry Hub” Wednesday. And since he didn’t anticipate any significant shifts in basis differentials, Northeast citygates are likely to join in overall cash market increases.

There’s quite a lot of anxiety in crude oil markets over events in the Middle East, the marketer continued, and he couldn’t help but think that anxiety will spill over at least partially into the North American gas market this summer.

Cooling and heating load also are currently scarce in the Midwest, where one source said the weather was “really beautiful” Tuesday. Like the Northeast marketer, she said forecasts indicated that regional conditions would remain pretty mild throughout the week.

Another factor dampening demand in northern markets is that several nuclear plants in the Northeast, Midwest and Mid-Atlantic returned to service over the weekend from recent outages, according to news reports.

The West tended to be the strongest market Tuesday from having some cooling demand to satisfy, but another price-supportive development was Kern River reporting normal linepack levels in all segments after a lengthy period in which linepack was ranked as high on most days. A Memorial Day high-linepack OFO by PG&E was lifted Tuesday.

In its forecast for the June 7-11 workweek, the National Weather Service expects above normal temperatures for almost the entire two-thirds of the U.S. west of a line roughly paralleling the Mississippi River. In this area it sees below normal readings only in Washington state and northern Oregon, while normal conditions are likely in a narrow strip running from Northern California through upper Montana, and in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin. East of the Mississippi, NWS also predicts above normal temperatures in the Northeast (excluding western New York and Pennsylvania) and below normal temperatures from North Carolina into the northern half of Florida and westward into Alabama.

Although forecasters were keeping an eye on a tropical disturbance in the eastern Pacific Tuesday, the Atlantic hurricane season began as expected with no significant activity.

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