Except for California softness, prices managed to edgemoderately higher Monday in the face of light weather-relateddemand and only a modicum of screen support. Unless they werelooking ahead to below normal temperatures forecast next week forthe eastern half of the U.S. by the National Weather Service,sources essentially had nothing concrete to which they could pointin explaining the upticks that continued Friday’s mini-rally.

Non-California price changes ranged from flat in a couple ofcases, to up barely more than a dime. A high-linepack OFO by theutility (see Transportation Notes) caused the PG&E citygate toplunge more than $2.

Due to more moderate weather in the Midwest, Midcontinent pointstraded a little softer relative to the Gulf Coast than they hadlast week, according to one source. There’s little weather load inthe West, and that had Rockies gas trying to go east into Midwestmarkets, he said. Midcontinent basis hasn’t moved much at all sinceMarch began, he reported.

With the spring season yet to officially begin, not to mentionsummer still way off on the horizon, it may have disturbed some tolearn that California was subject to rolling blackouts alreadyMonday (see related story). “It certainly can’t be for lack of gassupplies,” said one western marketer, noting that PG&E linepackwas running high enough to prompt a customer-specific OFO. All ofthe state’s gas-fueled power plants able to fire up are doing so,he said, “and SoCal [Gas] storage must be in good shape since theywent back to 70% daily balancing over the weekend.” However, themarketer added, PG&E is performing maintenance on its McDonaldIsland storage facility and thus is limited in injection capabilityfor the next four or five days.

“I hate to say it, but it’s the ‘same old same old’ againtoday,” an aggregator said. “This whole month has been in thedumpster as far as market activity goes, and with the Houston tradefair coming up, I don’t see anything that will get it [market] outof its rut.”

Fittingly with the start of injection season drawing near,analysts are expecting the withdrawal volume in this week’s AGAstorage report to be less than half of last week’s figure. Twofirms agreed in forecasting a withdrawal number centered on 30 Bcf,which compares to 75 Bcf a week earlier, and would represent asizeable reduction in the year-on-year storage deficit.

©Copyright 2001 Intelligence Press Inc. All rights reserved. Thepreceding news report may not be republished or redistributed, inwhole or in part, in any form, without prior written consent ofIntelligence Press, Inc.