Prices registered medium to large gains at all points to open the week. A large majority of Monday’s upticks were confined to the teens, but they exceeded 20 cents at several Northeast citygates and nearly all western points except those in the Permian Basin area.

An expiration-day screen that settled more than 16 cents higher, largely on short-covering activity provided much of the impetus for cash strength, sources said. However, although milder weather trends have developed as predicted since late last week, there was still enough chill in the Northeast and Upper Midwest to generate lingering heating load, albeit fairly moderate, a couple of traders said. And efforts to top off storage accounts before withdrawal season begins continued to provide some demand, one added.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s “Plant Status Report” web site remains inaccessible, but one producer reported being aware of several nuclear plants being down for both scheduled and unscheduled maintenance, contributing to gas-fired generation load.

The PG&E citygate, which had seen Friday’s biggest decline due to a high-linepack OFO, made the biggest advance of the day since the OFO was discontinued after Saturday. Also, people were buying extra at the gate to get set up for December imbalance reckoning, an aggregator said. “You would want to try to be long at the citygate next month because any positive imbalance you’ve built up on the PG&E system by the end of November gets rolled over into December,” when winter demand presumably would be rising substantially, he said.

Traders took note of the formation of Tropical Depression 14 west-southwest of the Azores Islands and TD 15 just off the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua. However, neither was considered even remotely as a market factor Monday.

The latest six-to-10-day forecast from the National Weather Service certainly wasn’t very supportive of higher prices. Starting next Sunday NWS sees no below normal temperatures anywhere except the peninsula of Florida, and other than normal readings along the East and West Coasts, above normal temperatures are expected throughout the rest of the United States.

Several traders reported November bidweek prices rising marginally (by only a few cents) Monday in response to the screen run-up. For example, one who bought at the SoCal border for $3.03 in the morning said numbers had edged slightly higher to $3.06 that afternoon. However, a marketer said there may be a chance of slippage today, saying the December futures contract appeared to be coming under selling pressure Monday afternoon.

October swing tended to trade slightly above November fixed prices, but sources agreed that generally convergence was fairly good.

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