Except for continued triple-digit spikes in California, theprice rally that began in trading for the weekend appeared to berunning out of steam quickly Monday. Non-California gains rangedfrom barely above flat to nearly 60 cents at Stanfield; most wereless than 15 cents.

Weekend snows from the Great Lakes region through the Northeastjustified the weekend price upticks, said an eastern trader.However, the colder conditions were of brief duration and alreadygiving way to a warming trend Monday, which didn’t augur well forfurther increases today, he said. The National Weather Service heldout little encouragement for bulls, he noted, as it projects abovenormal temperatures across the eastern half of the U.S. for earlynext week.

A marketer also expected prices to start coming off again today,albeit only moderately. It’s still cold in the major market areas,he said, but not cold enough to keep prices on the rise. Themarketer also noted that while the screen spent the morning inmoderately positive territory, it might have been pointing the wayfor cash by softening in the afternoon to an eventual tiny loss.

“I don’t think they’ve beat this down as low as it can go yet,”said a Midcontinent source, explaining he meant there’s room formore decline in both futures and cash numbers. However, he detectedsigns of some buying interest returning that had been absent fromthe market for a while. A few dual-fuel customers have begunswitching back from fuel oil to gas now that gas supplies aren’t soprohibitively expensive, the source said. In addition, fertilizermakers are starting to think they can get back to their regularbusinesses now instead of selling gas to make better profits, “andit’s a good thing too, because the fertilizer supply bins arenearly empty with the farmers getting ready for spring plantingonly a couple of months from now.”

Although California was under a Stage Three Electrical Emergencyagain Monday, Cal-ISO believed it would be able to get through theday with no rolling blackouts. It had regained nearly 3,000 MW fromoutages since last week; unfortunately, they were in the southernpart of the state and unable to get to Northern California wherethey were needed most because of congestion on Path 15, the primarynorth-south transmission artery.

Nevertheless, Malin recorded Monday’s biggest price advance ofmore than $2.30, boosting the associated Stanfield point in theprocess. A marketer said most of the border spike generated bySoCal Gas going to 70% daily balancing Sunday had been generated inFriday’s trading, and new border quotes were up by little more thana dollar Monday. “So far, so good,” he said of the balancing rule.”We’re on the right side of the curve there, making sure we haveample supplies to back up our nominations.”

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