Many traders likely hauled out dictionaries Monday in attemptsto find the right adjectives to describe the awesomeness of themarket they were experiencing. In a tremendous push inspired byrevised forecasts calling for a severe winter cold snap next week,most points measured gains in the range of 70-95 cents, anddollar-plus advances were not uncommon. Some quotes topped $20 atall three California points.

“This is still early,” said a Midcontinent marketer. “Theweather will be cold this week, but what’s driving the market arethe revised weather models indicating it will get even worse nextweek. They’re talking about an arctic front moving in like the onein early February 1996” that caused even higher prices than thecurrent ones at many points.

The big difference between then and now, the marketer continued,is that the February 1996 spikes were a relatively transitoryphenomenon while the ones in late 2000 appear to have considerablymore staying power. Next week’s cold snap “will affect the entirecountry,” he said.

The bullishness was manifested in the Nymex trading pits also.”We had to keep doing double-takes at the screen to make sure whatwe were seeing was for real,” said the buyer for an easternutility. Although the crude oil contract lost ground, heating oiljoined natural gas in a strong showing. The gas contract forJanuary was up more than a dollar at one point before settling fora regular session closing at 76 cents higher.

“This market has just gotten incredible, in my opinion,”commented a Northeast buyer. He doesn’t expect this week’s storagereport to reflect as big a drawdown as the last one, “but the nexttwo reports after that one [coming up] are likely to be realwowsers.”

Cash numbers kept moving up as the morning proceeded, traderssaid. “I’m pretty sure I left money on the table in both places,”said a producer reporting early sales around $7.30 for NGPL’sMidcontinent pool and in the mid $7.40s at the Chicago citygate.

One marketer viewed the situation as “little movements in theweather are just translating to big movements in the [cash] marketand the screen. It’s really been building up for a while now.People have been in denial for the past four or five months, usincluded. The winters haven’t been ‘normal’ for the past threeyears, and they’re just kind of getting to normal now. This all[price spikes] may be taken off like a dirty shirt later, but we’rewearing it now.”

Although he had trouble understanding who might be injecting gasat border prices near $20, one trader said SoCal Gas managed toregister about half a Bcf in net storage injections over theweekend.

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