The cash market made another big surge Monday as traders debatedwhether storage worries or new weather forecasts carried the mostweight in the renewed bullishness. Gains tended to range from abouta quarter to more than a dollar in Transco’s Zone 6 pools in theNortheast. Some production area points were exceeding January indexlevels.

“It looks like Nymex is trying to make another run at $10,”noted a Houston-based marketer. He and other sources agreed that athird straight day of screen strength certainly provided a securefoundation for the cash upticks. But, the marketer said, a new setof forecasts indicating colder market-area weather this week wasthe biggest factor. However, “it depends on who you want tobelieve,” he added. The National Weather Service doesn’t seem tosee that much change coming up, “but some private forecasters thinkit will get colder again,” he said.

To a producer, the new forecasts had some influence, “but it’sreally storage issues” that will keep dominating the market overthe next few weeks, he said. He reported hearing guesses that theAGA will report about 190 Bcf in storage withdrawals Wednesday, buthad some doubts about that big a volume. The weather moderatedsignificantly in many regions last week, the producer pointed out,and he suspects many people were injecting as much gas as possiblewhile prices were still below index.

“That’s all we did,” said a trader reporting only one deal atthe Southern California border. “Basically tomorrow’s market wascanceled due to lack of interest,” she quipped.

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