Prices ranged from flat to about 30 cents higher at a solid majority of points Monday as the overall cash market shrugged off the 33.9-cent dive by November futures last Friday and a continuing lack of significant Atlantic tropical activity to focus on hot weather in the Midwest and south-central U.S. along with the return of industrial load from its typical weekend hiatus.

Rockies points, however, started off the current week much in the same fashion as they often have in the past couple of months — with large losses. However, the most recent plunges weren’t as severe as many in the recent past and left all Rockies points averaging more than $2, unlike some prior sub-dollar averages. Opal saw a low-end quotes of an even dollar.

An El Paso-San Juan (Bondad pool) loss of about 35 cents combined with several small declines in other areas to sustain mixed price change direction. The Midcontinent tended to see most of Monday’s largest increases.

A cold front moving into the region is about to prompt a striking turnaround in Midwest weather. Ahead of the front, Chicago and Detroit were both hitting peak temperatures around 90 degrees Monday. But the Tuesday forecast called for highs of 69 in Chicago and 72 in Detroit.

Heating load is continuing to show up in the northern tier of states, with Tuesday highs in the 40s and low 50s expected from Maine to Washington state and some cities due to reach the 30s in the Upper Midwest and Upper Plains. As it was last week, most of the current cooling demand continues to reside from the western half of the South through the desert Southwest.

Areas of showers and thunderstorms continued Monday over the western Caribbean Sea, The Weather Channel reported, but there were no well organized surface lows. “Still, conditions aloft remain favorable for slow development of a tropical system, and the area will continue to be monitored closely for the next several days,” the forecasting service said, adding that elsewhere in the Atlantic Basin there are no disturbances of concern.

A marketer for several Gulf Coast independent producers reported getting a lot of calls for intraday gas from power generators, saying they may have underestimated their weekend cooling loads and were making up imbalances. But his company also saw a fair amount of next-day demand from the generators as high temperatures around 90 degrees continue in Texas. It was able to place all of its Waha gas easily, he said.

Patient sellers who waited made extra money as prices were rising in late deals, the marketer continued. To him, that made it a toss-up on calling Tuesday’s price direction. Late price movement, whether up or down, usually indicates where the cash market is going the next day, he noted, but Monday’s Nymex weakness (the November natural gas contract tacked on a 22.7-cent loss to its Friday decline amid major drops throughout the energy futures complex) argues for the opposite.

Another marketer agreed that prices were moving higher in late deals, which he attributed primarily due to November natural gas futures making a recovery back above $7 in the midst of Monday morning’s cash trading. He still had to project moderate softness in Tuesday’s cash quotes, saying he didn’t really see any good reason for the late extra strength despite the screen recovery prior to its afternoon plunge.

The marketer said his company found strong power loads in the Midwest as well as Texas. Sunday’s Chicago Marathon, in which a runner died and the last half of the course was closed about four hours into the race, took place on a day more resembling midsummer instead of the nippy kind of weather that the city is used to as mid-October approaches, he said.

The number of drilling rigs actively searching for gas in the U.S. fell by another 12 in the week ending Oct. 5, according to the Baker Hughes Rotary Rig Count (https://intelligencepress.com/features/bakerhughes/). The onshore decline was nine while three rigs exited the Gulf of Mexico, Baker Hughes said. Its tally was down 5% from a month ago and unchanged from the comparable period last year. The latest Baker Hughes count was the lowest since early January, said SunTrust Robinson Humphrey/the Gerdes Group.

Citigroup analyst Tim Evans made early projections of 80 Bcf and 75 Bcf additions to storage during the weeks ending Oct. 5 and Oct. 12, respectively.

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