Except for still-exploding Northern California numbers, the cash market was mostly in standpat mode Thursday. Eastern prices tended to move little if at all, and there was generally moderate softness in the Southwest basins and Rockies.

With weather a fairly benign influence on prices in most markets, many traders turned their attention to the screen’s gradual run-up of nearly a quarter. Much of the futures gain occurred after cash trading had finished, so it had little impact on Thursday’s prices other than to send intra-Alberta quotes (which trade throughout the day) up from the high C$7.40s to around C$7.70 late, a Calgary source said. A Gulf Coast producer expects other markets to get a boost today from Thursday’s screen rise, but upticks likely will be mild due to the tempering influence of lower weekend demand, he said.

What impressed the producer most, though, was “bullish sentiment finally starting to kick in from Wednesday’s storage report.” Next week’s report will be a big-time indicator of how well the injection season will go, he said. The producer said he was starting to see air conditioning load go up in the South a little, but not enough yet for significant price impact.

A Houston-based marketer observed that Henry Hub cash prices went from trading at a premium to the screen to trading at a discount Thursday as many Northeast utilities turned back gas they had been burning Monday through Wednesday. Demand could get even lighter today, he predicted, “when cash prices venture above index levels for the first time this month. It will be interesting to see how much of the demand we have seen for the first four days of the month was merely implied because prices were below first-of-month levels.”

Although the Southern California border was mostly flat, PG&E citygates rose more than 60 cents and Malin quotes skyrocketed by more than $3.60. The seeming disconnect between the two points is mostly a throughput issue, one marketer said; traders can’t get as much through Malin as what is demanded at the citygate. NOVA maintenance that is cutting IT capacity at the A/BC border is allowing a brief window for extra supplies from points other than Kingsgate to reach Malin, she said.

Sources again attributed the strength in California prices partly to unseasonably cool weather but mostly to high power prices in the state. The electricity increases are being exacerbated by nuclear unit outages at Palo Verde and San Onofre, and by Tuesday’s downing of a line on the 500-kilovolt Pacific DC Intertie, which caused the loss of 3,000 MW. One western trader reported hearing that the Intertie line will not be repaired until early next week.

Rockies traders who had expected to begin injections again Thursday at Questar’s Clay Basin storage facility got a somewhat rude awakening. The pipeline was having problems finishing up this week’s maintenance, a marketer said, and had to make a pro rata cut of about 75% in nominations.

A marketer said low injection levels into SoCalGas storage facilities have put pressure on forward-month basis at the border, which was reported as having strengthened again Thursday to around plus $10.00. This in turn has put pressure on prompt cash prices, he said. “The thinking here is that gas not going into the ground now means more gas that will need to go into the ground this summer, when injections will be battling with cooling demand requirements. Currently SoCal storage is below a quarter full at about 23 Bcf. Injections on Saturday and Sunday were about 1 Bcf combined, and since then the market has only put away 250 Mcf. Those are not the type of injections that will get storage back to healthy levels.”

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