Once again the bulls were on a rampage Tuesday, and sourcesexpected them to still be running today. Increases of about a dimeor more at all points dominated the cash market for the secondstraight day. Prices got support from a cold snap in thenortheastern U.S. and eastern Canada, hot weather from Californiathrough the Southwest into Texas and Louisiana and parts of theMidcontinent, and continued screen strength—both in natural gasand crude oil futures. Gas gained just over a dime, and crude rosejust over a dollar to finish above $22/bbl.

That cold front is moving into the upper East Coast faster thanexpected, said a Gulf Coast producer hearing reports of freezingconditions in some of the Northeast and reporting mid $2.60s saleson several Gulf pipes. The market-area cold should stick around foranother couple of days, she said, so it’s reasonable to expect thecurrent price strength to remain at least until the weekend.

A Midcontinent producer also looking for prices to climb highertoday admitted that, demand “is a little bit artificial [in that]it is due to the extremely high November futures contract.” He’sstill bullish, but added, “Then again, who knows what will happenafter the AGA report” comes out this afternoon.

An aggregator noted that TCO (Columbia-Appalachia) started outslowly only a couple of cents higher but really ran up toward theend of trading. He said he wasn’t sure exactly what was drivingdemand, “but when you have gas to sell at a point that rises 4cents in five minutes, as TCO did around 11 a.m., who cares?”

In addition to the screen boost, western numbers got furthersupport from unusually hot weather in California for this time ofyear, a marketer said. Besides a number of nuclear and/or coalplant outages, power generation load in the Golden State washeightened by maintenance that began Monday on the electrictransmission line that connects Northern and Southern California.The work, which is cutting the line’s capacity to about 900 MW fromits normal 1,500 MW, is expected to finish Oct. 23, according tothe California Independent System Operator. “As a result, every gasunit in Northern California that can be is fired up,” a marketertold NGI.

A Rockies trader said Midcontinent prices had started 9-14 centshigher in the morning, “and that always helps strengthen Rockiesprices for its gas to get pulled in two directions” (from both theWest Coast and the Midcontinent/Midwest points).

The intra-Alberta market was going crazy, said a Calgary sourcereported prices as high as C$3.68 after beginning at C$3.33. NOVAlifted ABC (Alberta/British Columbia border) constraints onSaturday, she said, but the salutary price effect really didn’tshow up until yesterday because of Monday’s Thanksgiving Dayholiday in Canada. In addition, Empress volumes went up by about100 MMcf/d, suggesting that a chilly eastern Canada was drawingmore gas in that direction, she added.

Reconnaissance by an Air Force plane found little organizationin an area of disturbed weather over the western Caribbean Sea, theNational Weather Service said. However, “conditions remainfavorable for development, and the system could become a tropicaldepression or a tropical storm during the next day or so,” NWSadded.

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