With fresh forecasts and other signs hinting at a potential early start of heating season, gas buyers were spurred to keep pushing their storage injection schedules and to acquire supplies for immediate burns in the northern U.S. and Canada, where chilly start-of-fall temperatures have more furnaces getting turned on as the week progresses. The result Tuesday was further price increases, nearly all of them in double digits. The upticks ranged from a little under a dime to nearly 30 cents; most of those over 20 cents occurred at Rockies/San Juan/Pacific Northwest points.

A few New England citygates were topping out at just over $5 as lows in the 40s and 50s dominate the weather picture from the Northeast through the Upper Plains. And by the end of the week the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast should be cold enough for some “serious” heating load, a Gulf Coast marketer said. Those regions are due to see lows in the upper 30s and highs in the mid 50s, he said.

However, the marketer noted that colder weather “has to last a while” before it makes a meaningful difference in gas demand. He didn’t see much “real logic” in Tuesday’s cash advances, saying fundamentals were not that strong yet.

Power generation demand is slowly ramping up in the Mid-Atlantic as more electric outages caused by Hurricane Isabel late last week get fixed, but no significant jumps in gas-fired load were reported. New storms overnight Monday and Tuesday morning caused setbacks for Baltimore Gas & Electric and Dominion Virginia Power despite their overall progress (see story in Power Market Today).

One source noted that a lot of maintenance for coal and nuclear generation plants is typically scheduled for this time of year, which would tend to keep the gas units more active over the next few weeks.

A Calgary-based producer said he thought relative strength in the oil market is helping support gas prices. Although November crude oil futures eventually settled for a tiny loss Tuesday (the October contract expired Monday), they were higher in the morning due to expectations that OPEC would make no change in production quotas at its Wednesday meeting. November crude also stayed above the psychologically important $27/bbl level.

The producer also mentioned that the Calgary area was “cool” around 40 degrees F., but would get up to near 70 in the next day or so. Such wide thermometer swings are fairly common in autumn, he said.

Although the Atlantic tropical storm front remains serene for the time being, Pacific activity may have a rare, albeit small, impact on the gas market. Tropical Storm Marty (following a downgrade from hurricane status) was slowing and starting to dissipate in the northern Gulf of California about 230 miles south-southeast of Yuma, AZ. Its associated thunderstorms were reaching the extreme southern portions of Arizona and New Mexico, along with far western Texas, according to The Weather Channel. The Phoenix area, which was still recording 100-degree-plus highs Tuesday, was predicted to slip to the mid 90s Wednesday.

A buyer said pricing strength at Opal caused some large ranges in California prices (Opal lagged SoCal border numbers in the low to mid $4.40s by only about 20 cents). “I swapped gas with an 11-cent premium in my favor, and I was being a little conservative,” the buyer said. “If you played your cards right today, gas sold for more than 20 cents what I paid for it.”

An East Coast utility buyer reported starting to prepare for bidweek Tuesday afternoon. “Somebody wanted to start doing October deals Monday and I said, ‘No way, it’s too early for that,'” she said.

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