Nearly all markets ranged from flat to just over a dime higherin post-weekend trading Monday, with most increases on either sideof a nickel. The stronger rises tended to occur mainly at westernpoints, while most of the very mild softness was at Northeastcitygates.

Sources attributed the renewed cash firmness to a modestlyhigher gas futures screen, complemented by upticks in the crude oiland heating oil futures contracts in which crude for April deliverysettled above $32/bbl.

But storage injections still remain a fairly potent pricebooster, said a Northeast aggregator. Market demand is not gettingany relief from fuel switching, he said, because that’s not aviable option with fuel oil prices at their current heights. Henoted that Northeast prices either dipped below or were flirtingwith index levels. “We got off a Transco Zone 6-NYC package at$3.06 before the point dropped to trade between index at $3.05 and$3.00,” he said. However, buyers became more plentiful as pricesdropped toward $3, he added.

Although weather currently is spring-like for most of the East,heavy rainstorms are dragging along a cool front into SouthernCalifornia and the Southwest, according to one marketer. “Theweather and Nymex, that said it all [Monday] as far as we’reconcerned,” he said.

The PG&E citygate was strong because it’s averaging three tofour degrees cooler than normal in Northern California, and alsobecause the citygate is sensitive to the screen, one sourcereported. He predicted that citygate and futures prices will remainstrong through the rest of March, but he did wish the PG&Ecitygate/Southern California border spread would get wider; theywere less than 20 cents apart Monday.

A Midcontinent marketer is bullish about the last half of March,saying two of his company’s forecasting consultants expect “morenormal weather” then. The latest six- to 10-day National WeatherService forecast for early next week expects normal temperaturesto reign throughout the U.S., with virtually all below-normalexpectations confined to north of the Canadian border and allabove-normal temperatures confined to the Southwest.

A marketer called Reliant’s eastern pool “the beast from theEast” Monday because of its ability to pull well ahead of theMidcontinent pipe pack and trade as high as the upper $2.70s.

One marketer estimated that nuclear plant outages formaintenance and/or refueling were equivalent to about 1.5 Bcf/d ofpower generation demand for gas (although it can’t be assumed thatgas is substituting for the nuclear shoftfalls in every case).

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