Most eastern points were joined by Permian Basin/Waha quotes in continuing to move lower Monday, but non-Permian/Waha markets in the West rallied from what had tended to be the biggest weekend price drops.

Softening in the East was modest, as nearly all declines were in single digits and a few flat points were included in the mix. A couple of New England citygates and a few other scattered points even managed small gains. Mild to cool weather in most eastern areas outside the South was cited as the key factor in the price retreats, although Friday’s halt of a bullish streak in natural gas futures also played a small role.

Most of the West’s rebounds also were small at less than a dime, although San Juan-Blanco notched an increase of a little more than a dime and the Southern California border, which had fallen just shy of half a dollar Friday, recovered nearly 30 cents. The region still had substantial cooling load in the desert Southwest, inland California and even in parts of the Pacific Northwest, but the biggest price support came from the absence of a PG&E OFO that had depressed the weekend market.

Western air conditioning demand for gas undoubtedly would have been stronger if not for the fact that two of the Palo Verde nuclear plant’s three reactors were at 100% operation again Monday after having been shut down a week earlier following a “grid disturbance.” Each back-in-service reactor contributes 1,243 MW to the electricity market, and the third (1,247 MW) was at 18% power Monday, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in NGI‘s NRC Power Reactor Status Report (https://intelligencepress.com/subscribers/power/nrc/).

“Temperatures are below normal here,” said a Midwest utility buyer who added that he didn’t think local highs got above the 60s over the weekend. All in all, current demand is low, the buyer went on, and with Monday’s big dives in energy futures, it’s natural to expect cash quotes to fall again Tuesday. He suspected that prices would probably be declining much more rapidly if traders didn’t see storage injection opportunities while numbers stay below first-of-month indexes

A Chicago trader also commented on how mild regional weather is currently, saying it was no surprise to see flat citygates unable to rally after the weekend. “I’m not seeing any substantial heat in the forecast all week,” he said, so he was expecting prices mostly to be moving either sideways or down over the next few days.

A trader in the lower Northeast was another to report seeing very subdued demand by “kind of mild weather with highs in the upper 70s and low 80s; nothing at all to get excited about.” It’s still too early for most people to be talking about the July market, she said. The trader expects bidweek activity to start heating up around Friday when options expire at Nymex.

A couple of traders agreed that this week’s market had started out very quietly. A Houston-based marketer said he knew of quite a few regular trading counterparties that were already in Omaha for the College World Series (CWS). He didn’t see any noticeable effect on liquidity, though, saying those people were either trading on the road or had people covering for them back at their offices. Commenting on the popularity of the CWS among gas traders, the other source jested that of course, it didn’t hurt that there will be a golf tournament for them Wednesday.

July baseload prices are looking kind of weak at this point, said one source who noted that the June screen had gone off the board at $6.680 while July futures ended at the $6.339 level Monday. But there’s a whole week of July screen action left that could move things higher or lower, he said.

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