The Northeast, with its relatively moderate weather for late November, tended to be the weakest market area in Monday’s post-holiday spot trading. Otherwise, numbers were mixed in the Gulf Coast and seeing major rallies solidly across the Midcontinent/Midwest and West.

Gains ranged from about a nickel to a little shy of $2.40 at a couple of western points. In the Gulf Coast and Northeast, prices were flat to down a little more than 60 cents, but had some fairly substantial advances also, primarily in South and East Texas.

Cold weather was the name of the price strength game in the Midcontinent/Midwest and West. A blizzard Monday in the Plains region and western parts of the Midwest was due to subside somewhat Tuesday but still leave temperatures below seasonal norms. Snow is prevalent over most of the mountainous sections of the West, and even Southern Californians were shivering in mid 40s temperatures Monday, one source said.

Besides the cold, other factors enhancing western price strength were the cessation of high-linepack OFOs by California’s two giant distributors over the holiday weekend (see Transportation Notes) and Kern River reporting low linepack in all four segments Monday.

Meanwhile, a cold front is forecast to start creeping eastward into the Northeast Tuesday but isn’t expected to lower temperatures appreciably across the region until late Wednesday or maybe even Thursday. The South is chilly for the most part, with the lowest temps towards its western end.

A shortage of interruptible transportation for Texas supplies to head east toward Northeast markets may have proved a price boon to them, as they found plenty of demand heading north into the Midcontinent and Midwest.

It looks like a couple of more days of fairly weak pricing along the East Coast before cold weather brings a rally there, said a marketer. He is hearing estimations of a 30-50 Bcf storage draw to be reported for the week ending Nov. 25, but thought such volumes would be high considering the report period included two holiday days in addition to the weekend preceding them.

Daily trading was almost an afterthought Monday for some traders pressing to finish December business. Basis was pretty much unchanged from Wednesday, a producer who trades the Northeast, and he was not seeing enough fixed prices yet to get a handle on them. He reported these basis numbers being done Monday: Transco Zone 6-NYC at plus $2.00, Texas Eastern M-3 at plus $1.50; and Transco Zone 6 (non-NYC) at plus $1.40.

He and another producer concurred that “most of that [fixed-price trading]” usually gets done after the futures settlement has been established. He is looking for December indexes to be $3 or so lower than November’s, adding that was trying to get most if not all of his December deals wrapped up Monday afternoon.

A Gulf Coast producer said he had done a lot of basis and index deals so far during bidweek, but had held back a little gas for fixed-price sales. Despite the screen’s 44-cent expiration-day plunge, he saw no big loss in waiting because Gulf Coast fixed prices were trading higher than the Nymex settlement, he said. The producer said he didn’t like to have come back into the office Monday after the holiday break, and probably would taken a couple of more days off if futures hadn’t been expiring.

Possibly because of slowed-down work during Thanksgiving observances, only modest progress was noted over the four-day holiday weekend in restoring shut-in Gulf of Mexico production. Minerals Management counted 3,059.98 MMcf/d as remaining offline Monday in reports from 55 companies. That was 135.80 MMcf/d less than last Wednesday’s tally.

As expected, Tropical Storm Delta stayed well towards the eastern side of the Atlantic and was becoming extratropical southwest of the Canary Islands Monday, the National Hurricane Weather said in its final planned advisory on the storm. Its eastward movement would take it to the central coast of Morocco Tuesday morning, the agency said.

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