With Tuesday lows forecast to keep approaching or going below the freezing level in the Northeast and Midwest, spot prices recorded double-digit gains at all points Monday. The return of industrial load from its holiday weekend decline and the previous Thursday’s 4.1-cent increase by April futures also provided small measures of support for the cash market.

Increases ranged from about a quarter to a little more than 85 cents.

With SoCalGas lifting Monday a high-linepack OFO that had been in effect since the previous Thursday, the Southern California border reclaimed to the penny the 88-cent loss it had seen Thursday. The Southwest basins and Arizona/Nevada market also were up strongly as some early 2008 cooling load is beginning to surface. El Paso, TX, and Phoenix are expected to reach highs Tuesday of 85 and 90 degrees, respectively, according to Madison, WI-based Weather Central.

Meanwhile, however, it is the lingering vestiges of winter in northern market areas that primarily drove Monday’s rebound from across the board losses in Thursday’s trading for the Good Friday/Easter holiday weekend. Temperatures are not expected to get above the 30s and 40s Tuesday in the Great Lakes region and upper Northeast, The Weather Channel said.

Although much of the Southeast will get a frosty start to the day Tuesday, “temperatures will climb nicely,” TWC said. The region’s western end is expected to see highs climbing back into the 70s following a chilly weekend.

Outside the heat levels starting to build in the Southwest, western highs will continue to be freezing in the upper Rockies and in the 40s and 50s in the Pacific Northwest, TWC said.

The often-delayed start-up of full operations in the Rockies Express (REX) Pipeline’s REX-West segment has been postponed again (see related story). Project sponsors once again cited adverse weather as the chief reason why the completion of the 210-mile segment from the ANR interconnect in Brown County, KS, to the Panhandle Eastern interconnect in Audrain County, MO, has been extended to mid-April. Until Thursday afternoon’s posting the projected in-service date for the segment had been late March.

In a disconnect from a near-dollar dive by May crude oil, the April natural gas futures contract was able to rise 26.4 cents Monday.

But a Gulf Coast producer said he didn’t think Monday’s screen strength will be enough to keep cash prices from sliding Tuesday. Several LDCs that his company normally would have expected to sell spot gas to Monday weren’t buying because of predictions of moderating temperatures in their service areas, he said.

The producer reported getting a slight jump on bidweek by doing a lot of index deals for April Monday. He said he traded Transco Station 30 at index minus half a cent, Tennessee Zone 0 at index flat, and several other Gulf Coast points at index plus small premiums.

The number of drilling rigs actively searching for natural gas in the United States fell by eight to 1,433 during the week ending March 21, according to the Baker Hughes Rotary Rig Count (https://intelligencepress.com/features/bakerhughes/). Six rigs went inactive onshore while the Gulf of Mexico lost two, Baker Hughes said. Its total tally was flat compared to a month earlier and down 2% from the year-ago level.

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