The post-holiday market had a little something for everybody’s tastes Monday. Like big upticks? Go west, young man (or woman). Prefer more moderate but still sizeable gains? The Midcontinent was the place to be. How about you ambivalent types that like to mix it up? The Gulf Coast and Midwest citygates were the regions to trade, although losses outweighed the gains. And for the pure bears out there, it didn’t get any more price-negative than in the Northeast.

Yes, swing prices emerged from the plunges leading into the Thanksgiving weekend with very little consistency in a new direction. The immediate outlook also was muddled. Snow in the Rockies was gladdening the hearts of ski resort operators, the Upper Midwest should be experiencing the winter storm today, and the Southeast is due for colder weather after midweek. But with little else in fundamental strength to cite, a weakening screen and the Northeast remaining unseasonably mild for a while longer, there was some doubt about the market sustaining Monday’s scattered rallies. Also, Texas Eastern and Algonquin issued critical warnings about being overburdened with linepack (see Transportation Notes).

Noting that pricing yesterday wasn’t nearly as volatile as last week’s exaggerated swings, an East Coast utility buyer looks for the cash market to be “weak all week.” He added facetiously, “Didn’t you get the e-mail? Winter is already over.”

Except for cool temperatures in the Pacific Northwest and Northern California and some snow in the Rockies, weather played a relatively minor role in the West’s huge rebound, a marketer said. Rather it was more attributable to the lack of California OFOs, which had depressed prices so much last Wednesday, and the resurgence of industrial demand after a long weekend, he said.

“It was pretty darn dead in the Midwest” even with a winter storm pushing its way westward from the Plains region toward the Great Lakes, a Houston-based marketer said. He noted that the storm had a significantly more positive effect on Midcontinent field prices than on mixed Midwest citygates. The marketer expects generally soft numbers throughout this week.

Intra-Alberta was trading mostly in the C$3.20s Monday afternoon after ranging from the low C$2.90s to the high $3.50s earlier, a producer reported. However, weak eastern demand indicated that gas would be backing up into the province today, he said, so it’s reasonable to expect softening. December gas traded Monday in the C$3.49-70 range. If the interruptible swing gas gets backed up as expected, bidweek numbers could tumble, he said, “but we just did a deal at C$3.69, so right now it’s as high as ever.”

December business was predictably slow. With a softening price picture, buyers are in no hurry to get going, one source pointed out. Also, he said, almost everybody probably wants to wait for Wednesday when they’ll receive “the triple treat” of the Nymex close, the latest storage report and fresh weather forecast data.

A western marketer reported basis getting stronger since last week, quoting border-SoCalGas at minus 2-3 cents. “That’s a huge contrast from a year ago when we were quoting border basis at plus $12 or so,” he observed. Another trader said he was seeing the border priced at index flat to minus 1 cent. And a Midcontinent/Midwest marketer quoted basis for the Chicago citygate at plus 5-5.5 cents and for Panhandle Eastern at minus 12.5 cents, noting that Panhandle was “getting a little stronger in sympathy with [Monday’s] West prices.”

Assessing next month’s market, a Midcontinent trader posed this question: “Is $2.70 [Nymex] a good price for gas in December while cash [Henry Hub] is hanging around at less than $2.00? I can’t believe it is, and have to think that the screen will do a lot more convergence coming down than cash will coming up.”

His negative price outlook was bolstered by the latest six-to-10-day forecast Monday from the National Weather Service, which (not counting Alaska) had nary a below normal temperature designation in sight for the first few days of December. Instead, almost the entire U.S. was projected to experience above normal temperatures except for below normal readings along the West Coast and in the Upper Plains and Florida peninsula. However, Salomon Smith Barney Meteorologist Jon Davis said in his updated near-term forecast that it has already gotten colder in the plains over the last couple of days, and the same will happen in the middle of the country over the next two-three days. He said it is likely that the East Coast will still remain on the warm side (see related story this issue).

There was tropical storm news as the official 2001 Atlantic hurricane season entered its last five days. However, TS Olga not only wasn’t even a remote threat to Gulf production but also appeared to be a hazard to nothing more than shipping in the central Atlantic Ocean. It was more than 500 miles east of Bermuda as of mid-morning Monday and pointed toward the northern East Coast, but deemed unlikely to make it to shore.

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