The flat pattern that had dominated prices at most points from last Thursday through Monday was broken up Tuesday with upticks that tended to range from about a nickel to a little more than a dime. A few scattered points remained basically unchanged again, while variations from the overall trend included a drop of a nickel at Transco Station 85 (Mobile Bay) and a gain of about a quarter at Transco Zone 6-New York City.

While weather remained chilly to occasionally snowy in several parts of the Northeast, and Chicago is due to get its first snow of the heating season of any substance today, several sources still were dubious about Tuesday’s firmness being fundamentally justified. They acknowledged that the screen continued to point a few pennies higher for cash, but said otherwise it was difficult to find any reason for significantly increased demand, unless some people were still fattening their storage accounts.

Although Sable Island production and Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline throughput were back to normal, a marketer saw their lingering shortfall effects as part of the reason for the Northeast seeing most of Tuesday’s larger increases. He noted that the Transco Z6-NYC jump considerably widened the spread between market-area and production-area numbers. However, he added, “LNG [liquefied natural gas] is not really factoring in” to the Northeast market right now because of low demand and heavy storage inventories.

Production didn’t cease entirely at the Sable Offshore Energy Project during and after Sunday’s hurricane-equivalent storm, a spokeswoman said. “We were able to keep one well flowing.” Full output was restored Tuesday, she added. A Maritimes & Northeast spokesman said the pipeline was able to use that single well’s flow and its linepack to maintain some throughput, although volume got down to 150 MMcf/d for a while at one point. Normal throughput is 600 MMcf/d, she said. No restrictions are required for today’s gas day, the M&NE bulletin board said, but “current day supply flows will be used to restore depleted linepack.”

A western trader, reporting a spread of only 9 cents between Malin and the PG&E citygate, said he was able to make that work based on PG&E’s Redwood Path variable costs of about 3 cents; “after all, you’re going to have to pay your demand charge anyway whether you use it or not.” It was continuing to get cooler in Northern and Central California, PG&E’s service territory, he said, and currently nearly 1 Bcf/d is being withdrawn from PG&E storage facilities, nearly twice last week’s takeout level.

“It’s a tough market to call going forward,” said a Gulf Coast/Northeast marketer. “Fundamentals are so bearish, but somehow prices are bearing up anyway.”

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