As a marketer had predicted a day earlier, the 6.2-cent drop by futures combined with a lack of heating load in nearly all areas would be sufficient to cause mostly small losses in the cash market Tuesday.

A few flat points, mostly in the Northeast where some chilly conditions would linger through Wednesday, avoided the losses in the rest of the market, which ranged from 2-3 cents to about 15 cents.

The SoCal citygate saw the day’s biggest downturn after the SoCalGas utility issued a high-linepack OFO (see Transportation Notes). The Southern California border fell about a dime.

The market may continue to ride a seesaw Wednesday after May futures rebounded by 15.2 cents (see related story).

The South may be starting to contribute more cooling demand to the market with many sections expected to peak in the low to mid 80s Wednesday. And although major air conditioning use is unlikely in the Midwest, the region’s residents will also be unlikely to turn on furnaces with highs in the mid 70s due. The Northeast will still be on the cool side, with frost advisories possible in upper New England, according to The Weather Channel, but the region’s lower end will be in a warming trend.

Snow is likely to continue in some mountain areas of the West, but moderation will reign in most parts. Even Denver will bask in a relatively balmy high in the mid 60s.

Rockies producers are highly anticipating the impending conclusion of reservoir testing at Questar’s Clay Basin storage facility, with injection capacity due to return to 325,000 Dth/d Thursday along with 25,000 Dth/d of Park and Loan service for a total of 350,000 Dth/d, the pipeline said. Withdrawal capacity will be 590,000 Dth/d.

Operator Anadarko Petroleum is conducting routine maintenance on the Meg system at the Independence Hub platform in the Gulf of Mexico, but expects to complete the work and ramp up production to pre-shut-in levels “within the next three to four days,” the company said in a statement released to news services Tuesday. According to a Reuters report, traders said Independence production was down by about 300 MMcf/d after having averaged nearly 600 MMcf/d late last year.

Northern Natural Gas indicated how Upper Midwest temperatures are well above seasonal levels. The normal system weighted temperature at this time of year is 45 degrees, a bulletin board posting said Tuesday, but the pipeline was expecting averages of 61 Tuesday and 65 Wednesday before cooling off to 59 Thursday and 52 Friday.

A marketer in the Upper Midwest said local weather has been “alternating back and forth” between pretty mild and a bit cool. She said she had turned on the furnace at her house as recently as Monday night. Her company is buying a little spot gas here and there, but clients don’t need much because the weather is so moderate, she said.

A Lower Midwest utility source said temperatures were cooling back down a little since getting slightly above 80 Monday, but were still quite comfortable.

The National Weather Service (NWS) expects below-normal temperatures during the April 19-23 workweek everywhere south and east of a line extending generally westward from all of New Jersey and most of Pennsylvania down into the southern ends of Indiana and Illinois, then curving slightly to the northwest into central Missouri and the southern edge of Nebraska before turning south through western Colorado and New Mexico. NWS looks for below-normal conditions from all of Washington state and Oregon eastward through western Michigan.

Strategic Energy & Economic Research’s Ron Denhardt projected a storage injection of 85 Bcf being reported for the week ending April 9. Stephen Smith of Stephen Smith Energy Associates said he expects a build of 78 Bcf, up from his earlier estimate of 73 Bcf.

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