With a 31.9-cent futures spike on Monday as support in addition to this week’s spread of power generation load due to higher temperatures, cash prices continued their run-up Tuesday.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s reinforcement Monday of expectations for another busier than normal Atlantic hurricane season provided extra ammunition for bullish traders.

Double-digit gains continued to dominate increases that ranged from about a nickel to more than 60 cents. The West, where a surfeit of supply continues to be a market issue, tended to see most of the smallest gains although two Midcontinent points where the only ones to rise less than a dime.

A small decline of nearly 2 cents in June natural gas futures Tuesday eliminated prior-day screen support for cash quotes, but they may be able to extend their bull run into a third day Wednesday based on warming trends shaping up for the last half of the week in the Great Lakes and Northeast regions. Much of the western third of the U.S. also will be getting warmer, although the Pacific Northwest should remain five to 15 degrees below normal through Friday, The Weather Channe (TWC)l said.

Those temperature increases should add a bit to the air conditioning-related demand already existing across the southern half of the nation. However, TWC said, one tempering factor is that parts of the Southeast are not as humid as they normally would be with summer approaching quickly.

Questar’s gain of about a quarter Tuesday made it the only pipe to be priced above its first-of-month index; Questar held a premium of nearly a dime over index. Most other points are at double-digit discounts to index, primarily in the East. El Paso-Permian joined several Rockies points in displaying relative firmness in trading less than a dime below index.

Much as PG&E’s issuance of a high-linepack OFO for Tuesday failed to keep the PG&E citygate from rising 13 cents Monday, so did a similar order declared for Wednesday by SoCalGas (see Transportation Notes) have essentially no negative impact on Southern California border quotes Tuesday. They were up about 15 cents.

Because the SoCalGas e-mail notice of an OFO didn’t get sent until the afternoon, traders of the Southern California border did not have that information during morning business, a West Coast source pointed out. However, their operations people should have been able to tell from the giant LDC’s Envoy bulletin board that storage injection capacity was strained and that an OFO was probably in the offing, he added.

The source wasn’t surprised to see Monday’s screen spike, saying it went down so quickly last week that “we had to have a dead cat bounce.” With the three-day countdown to settlement beginning Wednesday, he said the big question is does the June contract finish above $6.30 or not? He also reported hearing “a lot of interest” in doing indexed deals for June.

He thought the leveling off of natural gas futures might allow cash traders to push prices a bit lower Wednesday, particularly at western points, but said the impressive strength in Nymex’s petroleum-based futures products could provide a countering effect. June crude oil finished the day up a whopping $1.80 to $71.76/bbl.

The National Weather Service forecast for the May 29-June 2 period calls for above normal temperatures everywhere north of a line running from the Atlantic Coast border of Virginia and North Carolina southwestward into southeast Texas before turning horizontal through West Texas, and everywhere east of a line running northward from the western end of Texas into eastern Montana. The federal agency looks for below normal temperatures throughout Idaho and Nevada, along with the western third of Montana, the eastern edges of Washington state and Oregon, and most of California except its southern end and a triangular section descending from its northern border.

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