Several flat to modestly higher numbers were tucked into the cash market here and there Monday, but softening still reigned at a substantial majority of points. Mild to above normal temperatures were due to continue Tuesday in most of the South, Midwest and lower West, but the Northeast and Pacific Northwest could expect to feel early-spring chills.

Monday’s declines ranged from 2-3 cents to nearly 20 cents, with Gulf Coast prices tending to soften most.

The Rockies, where a springtime blizzard nearly paralyzed much of eastern Colorado Sunday with its big, wet snowflakes, recorded many of the small gains that ran as high as a little more than a nickel. Regional traders likely had to make up weekend imbalances incurred by the weekend storm that swept through the Rockies and prompted CIG to declare Sunday night a Strained Operating Condition that was lifted Monday morning (see Transportation Notes).

Coupled with the cool weather anticipated in the two regions mentioned above, moderate advances of 6.7 cents and 39 cents in Nymex’s May natural gas and crude oil futures contracts respectively were expected to result in at least a small cash rally Tuesday.

In addition to the energy futures firmness, continued storage buying should provide cash prices with a modicum of support, said a marketer. There is little weather load in the Chicago citygate market that he trades (which fell about 15 cents), “but the futures strip is still saying inject if you can,” he said.

Chicago got weaker as Monday’s trading session went on until the screen gave it a little boost right at the end, the marketer said. He also suspected that traders getting caught in short supply positions may have played a part in the late uptick. He expects citygates to be in the low $7.10s Tuesday. He noted that a recent “big disconnect” between Chicago and Michigan citygates persisted Monday (delivered prices for MichCon and Consumers Energy in the $7.40s were more than 40 cents above Chicago levels). The Michigan premiums could be attributed to the state having an abundance of storage capacity, he thought.

A utility buyer in the Lower Midwest reported that his area was “getting a lot of rain” Monday. He thought that it was from the same system that dumped piles of snow in Colorado Sunday, because it was “very cold” a couple of hundred miles to the west, but at 64 degrees Monday afternoon, “it’s too warm here for freezing.” He said he expects a very warm rest of April in the Lower Midwest. He was among traders who expect a small cash rally Tuesday to result from Monday’s screen gain.

As an NGI source had expected (see Daily GPI, April 11), Tuesday’s scheduled outage of Tranwestern’s North Needles interconnect with SoCalGas had only a small negative impact on production-area prices Monday. Transwestern-West Texas fell about a nickel, the same as Waha. Quotes for both El Paso-Permian and the Southern California border were flat, although El Paso-San Juan was down about a dime. A western marketer reported little problem in scheduling around the one-day shutdown of North Needles.

Citigroup analyst Kyle Cooper says his final estimation for this week’s storage report calls for an injection of 47-57 Bcf. Noting a build of just 15 Bcf a year ago and draws of 13 Bcf and 7 Bcf in the comparable three-year and five-year averages, Cooper added, “Our projection is obviously for a rather significant increase in the inventory surpluses to the various benchmarks. The injection season has just begun, but injections must trail last year by 7 Bcf per week to eliminate the surplus by early November. We suspect inventories will slowly reduce that surplus, but remain above year-ago levels.”

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