California softness was the exception to Monday price increases that were in double digits in most cases and continued a general rally that had begun on Friday. Sources attributed the upticks mostly to a further rise in futures, but acknowledged that a widespread warm-up that created some date-specific high temperature records over the weekend was starting to generate some “decent” air conditioning load, particularly in the South and mid-Atlantic.

A producer in Texas said it was too bad he didn’t have any extra gas to sell because “we were getting a lot of calls” from buyers. He didn’t get much feedback about their buying interest, but figured it was a mix of Southern power generation load and storage injection demand.

A Canadian trader noted that his Midwest market area was “very stormy” but neither very hot nor very cold. Nevertheless, his Chicago citygate deals in the mid-$5.50s were up about a dime from Friday. He observed that Chicago was trading barely 1-2 cents above the screen early Monday, which he called a “surprisingly small spread.”

The Southern California border (into SoCalGas) fell more than a dollar, which was easily Monday’s biggest drop. Malin and the PG&E citygate were only moderately lower, and border-PG&E quotes actually rose about 25 cents, leaving them less than $2.50 below the border-SoCalGas. That represented a huge closure of a border spread that had yawned as wide as $5 last week.

Even with a mostly weaker California market, Rockies’ points registered several of Monday’s largest upticks. Part of that was due to screen support, a marketer said, but there was a bit of regional supply tightness and snowy weather in the upper Rockies. Also, storage demand was picking up now that Clay Basin is wide open again for injections, he said.

A trader already dabbling in May business reported basis deals for Northern Natural-demarc ranging from minus 0.75 cent to plus 0.5 cent. Index premiums for May were weakening, he added.

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