A modest show of strength in natural gas futures was no match for the continuing erosion of heating demand in most regions Tuesday, sources said. Wednesday’s remaining pockets of chill were expected to be confined to the Pacific Northwest, sections of the Upper Plains and Upper Midwest along the Canadian border, and the northern portions of the Northeast.

The result was a sprinkling of flat readings and moderate upticks, primarily clustered in the Midcontinent and at some Gulf Coast points, being overshadowed by weakness in the rest of the market. Losses tended to range from about a nickel to nearly 40 cents and were largest in the Rockies and at Northeast citygates.

The forecast for New England is for highs in the low 50s for most of this week, said a regional buyer, which probably won’t be enough to rally prices. However, temperatures should be peaking in the 40s next week, which probably will have more people turning their furnaces back on.

But it was getting downright warm Tuesday in the Lower Midwest with highs in the 80s, a marketer reported. However, the region still isn’t hot enough for any appreciable air conditioning load, he said. “Heck, we like this stuff. It’s giving us a chance to thaw out” after recent bouts of snow and freezing temperatures.

An explosion Monday morning at the Bushton (KS) Compressor Station of Northern Natural Gas (see related story) “didn’t even give the market a hiccup” when the pipeline quickly assured traders that deliveries would be kept whole, the marketer continued. All in all, it’s something of a “dead market” in early April, he said, and there’s nothing in sight near-term to change that.

A western trader agreed that things were “pretty quiet” Tuesday, but said the upcoming five-day outage of Transwestern’s San Juan Lateral (see Daily GPI, March 28) was starting to stir things up a bit. The outage will back up gas in the Rockies and San Juan Basin and cause major softness in those markets from Thursday through the weekend, but it might boost prices in the rest of the West by tightening supplies, he said. And since Permian/Waha isn’t in such big demand any more in the mild-weather Midcontinent/Midwest and intrastate Texas markets, it’s likely that more of that production will start heading west towards California, he concluded.

Analyst Kyle Cooper of Salomon Smith Barney said his final estimation for this week’s EIA report looks for a build between 21 and 31 Bcf.

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