A solid majority of points achieved rebounds Monday from across the board weekend plunges. The overall rally was considered largely driven by the previous Friday’s 35.2-cent spike in December futures (along with a little help from industrial load returning from its typical weekend drop) because weather fundamentals were weak for the most part.

Most of the cash market was flat to up nearly 70 cents. Losses ranging from about a nickel to 75 cents or so were most prevalent in the Rockies, where overnight lows around freezing were being countered by highs ranging from about 60 to 70.

CenterPoint-East had gotten as low as 20 cents Friday, but eclipsed that quote Monday with an all-time low for the Midcontinent of 2.5 cents.

It was not the record low in the history of the modern spot market, with several instances of one-cent deals having been reported in the Rockies last year. But the Midcontinent had never seen such cheap gas before. A search of NGI‘s price database found that the 20 lowest quotes of all time ranged from a penny to a dime and all had occurred in the Rockies.

It was unclear why CenterPoint was so weak; its West pool bottomed out at 20 cents Monday, but both the East and West pools recorded top quotes of $3. CenterPoint recently completed scheduled pigging of Line O, but the line is still isolated and being operated at reduced pressures for up to 60 days.

Although one issue of excess supply in the West eased when SoCalGas ended a high-linepack OFO Monday, El Paso said high linepack kept its probability of declaring a Strained Operating Condition or Critical Operating Condition at high.

Commenting on the poverty-level CenterPoint numbers, a Midwestern marketer said he supposed that operationally suppliers had to either accept super-low prices into the pipe or shut in, and they chose not to shut in. He noted that the Midcontinent market overall had started weakly but ran up pretty strongly on some pipes near the end, creating very volatile price ranges. He didn’t recall ever having seen such cheap gas in the region before.

Touches of weekend chill in the Midwest and Northeast were fading Monday as both regions were returning to relatively moderate late-fall conditions. A tad of cooling load may have developed in parts of the South as some locations there were due to see highs around 80 or slightly higher Tuesday.

Colder weather should be returning to most of the U.S. this weekend. In its six- to 10-day forecast posted Sunday for the Nov. 8-12 period, the National Weather Service predicted below-normal temperatures everywhere except in much of the Northeast (western New York state, most of New Jersey and all of Pennsylvania were included in the below-normal area) and in the northern Rockies/Upper Plains/Upper Midwest region stretching eastward from eastern Washington state to include northern Idaho, most of Montana, all of the Dakotas and Minnesota and northern Wisconsin.

Although any offshore production threat was remote, some traders may have perceived a smidgen of bullishness in what the National Hurricane Center (NHC) called a “broad and nearly stationary low-pressure area” over the southwestern Caribbean Sea that was accompanied by “disorganized cloudiness,” showers and thunderstorm. NHC rated the system as having medium potential for slow development over the next couple of days.

In a sharp reversal of a recent trend of declining drilling rig activity, Baker Hughes said its count of rigs actively seeking natural gas in the U.S. was up by 23 to 1,552 during the week ending Oct. 31 (https://intelligencepress.com/features/bakerhughes/). A decline of eight in the Gulf of Mexico was more than offset by an increase of 31 onshore. Baker Hughes said the latest tally was up 1% from a month ago and 7% above the year-earlier level.

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