Northeast citygates soared Monday, topping out at $9.00 in New England. That seemed natural, considering that the Northeast and Midwest were experiencing their worst siege of cold so far this winter, and chilly temperatures dominated most of the weather picture elsewhere.

But non-Northeast prices appeared to be taking a wait-and-see market attitude, with few points other than San Juan Basin recording gains of more than a dime. A majority of points ranged from flat to up or down about a nickel.

The Midwest is experiencing sub-freezing lows in the teens similar to those in the Northeast, but Midwest upticks of only a few pennies contrasted sharply with the advances realized to the east. One source could only guess that greater access to storage supplies in the Midwest was dampening upward price pressure there.

A Northeast utility buyer sees little price relief in sight, saying it will stay cold in the region all week, at least into the weekend. She noted that parts of New York state around Syracuse got buried under more than four feet of snow over the weekend. The buyer “chased” an Iroquois Zone 2 deal at $8.20 but couldn’t get it done, and after was hearing $7.80 pricing at the point and later down to $7.55. “I haven’t seen any significant switching to fuel oil yet among our industrial customers, but would expect it to begin soon” if delivered gas prices stay up around $7-8 in the Northeast for very long, she said.

The trend in the Rockies was also down, said a marketer quoting Kern River-Opal dropping from the mid $3.10s to the upper $3.00s. He said he had “no idea” why oil and gas futures went from softer at mid-morning to finishing at positive levels, other than the economics class standard of having “more buyers than sellers.” The gas screen settled nearly 11 cents higher and the crude screen, after initial weakness following OPEC’s Sunday confirmation that it would raise production limits by 1.5 million bbl/d, rebounded to end the day back above $32/bbl again.

It got cold enough in Florida that Florida Gas Transmission issued its first Overage Alert Day notice in nearly a month (see Transportation Notes), and citygate prices rose to either side of $5.50. “Luckily we don’t get many of those notices during the winter,” a utility buyer in the state said. The pipeline began the weekend with high linepack, she observed, “and we’d worked it down to low linepack by this [Monday] morning.” FGT had only one OAD last month on Dec. 16 (see Daily GPI, Dec. 18, 2002). Prior to that a lengthy string of OADs had come to an end in mid-November.

Despite the OAD on Florida Gas, another Southeast pipe, Sonat, is lifting an OFO that was implemented Saturday (see Transportation Notes).

A couple of other traders agreed with a Midcontinent marketer who said it was a “really quiet morning even with all the cold weather.” The whole market seems to be in a lull, he went on, saying that “the lack of phones ringing at our office was noticeable.”

Lehman Brothers analyst Thomas Driscoll estimated that this week’s storage report will be a withdrawal of about 105 Bcf (unchanged from his previous projection). Meanwhile, Kyle Cooper of Salomon Smith Barney looks for a pull “somewhere near 100 Bcf.”

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