In what was almost a direct reversal of Friday’s market, prices tended to fall Monday in most of the East while a majority of western points engaged in rallies. The return of industrial load from a weekend hiatus and hotter weather from the south-central states through the Southwest contributed to gains, while the softness could be attributed to the previous Friday’s screen decline and generally benign temperatures outside the southern U.S.

A few points were flat amid decreases that ranged from a couple of pennies to about 40 cents. Increases of about a nickel to a little more than 30 cents were clustered almost entirely in the West, with a few Midcontinent points also seeing moderate gains.

The entire cash market is now running double-digit deficits to first-of-month indexes, although no point is as much as a dollar below index.

The few western points that had defied overall regional softening Friday, such as Sumas, Stanfield and Malin, ran contrary to the grain of general western firmness in the opposite direction Monday with sizeable losses. And the Southern California border, which had dropped nearly 30 cents Friday, was up about a quarter Monday.

Temperatures in the East Coast states of the South will stay moderate for a while longer, but air conditioning load is starting to build again in the rest of the region, where highs in the 80s were predicted for Tuesday. Temperatures could top 100 degrees in the lower Rio Grande Valley and Trans-Pecos sections of Texas, The Weather Channel said, and would reach the 90s in parts of the desert Southwest.

Otherwise, weather-based demand is staying on the light side. Cool conditions were still in the forecast for the Northeast and Midwest, but they would not be cold enough to stir up any substantive heating load. And in the West, only the relatively sparsely populated northern Rockies and sections of the Cascades in Washington state were expected to feel any appreciable cold.

June natural gas futures fell another 7.9 cents Monday as its previous support from strong petroleum product numbers remained missing in action. Crude oil futures dropped below $70/bbl, their lowest level since early April.

Dominion provided some gauge of how far ahead of normal the industry is in refilling storage this year. The pipeline said its current working gas inventory stood at 140 Bcf as of May 4. That compares with 100 Bcf on May 5, 2005 and 94 Bcf on May 6, 2004, it said.

Despite the weaker screen, a Houston-based marketer noted that June futures were “up a tad” in Access Monday afternoon. “If all things stay the same,” he said, he saw a chance of slightly higher cash prices Tuesday. He didn’t see any problem with Chicago deliveries from NGPL pig runs that are scheduled Tuesday in Illinois. It’s getting a little chillier in northern market areas, he said, but any resultant rise in heating load was essentially imperceptible.

The marketer said his company was dealing with nomination cuts on Transco and Tennessee; those two pipes aren’t “shaking hands very well,” he added. Some of the cuts were the company’s fault and some were caused by others, he said.

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