The cash market continued to be bolstered by a strong June gas futures contract Monday, emerging from the weekend with remarkably consistent across-the-board gains from about a dime to nearly 35 cents. Upticks at a majority of points were in the 15-25 cents range.

Support from weather fundamentals was fading slightly as moderate to cool temperatures dominated the northern half of the U.S. and forecasted highs in the South failed to breach the 90-degree level except for peninsular Florida. Houston traders may have been feeling a bit more bearish after a cool front moved through the city on Mothers Day and left unseasonably mild temperatures in its wake Monday. However, hot and humid conditions are due back by midweek.

An Overage Alert Day notice for Florida Gas Transmission’s market area survived through the weekend, remaining at 15% tolerance for negative daily imbalances Monday.

A Northeast utility buyer said he was unaware of any specific reason why, but some of his late quotes were up nearly a dime from earlier ones. Looking at technical factors, he saw Monday’s futures increase as the last leg of a “five wave up.” That leads him to expect a weaker screen Tuesday with cash “following it down.” The crude oil and heating oil contracts pointed the way by going negative late after being in positive territory during the morning, he commented. Weather-related gas load in the buyer’s region is currently “in between,” he said: too mild for heating and not warm enough for air conditioning.

A western trader is not “seeing that much effect” in the Southwest basins from current Transwestern maintenance on its San Juan Lateral because the current work is in the segment from the Rocky Mountains to San Juan Basin. But he expects to be impacted “a lot” when the project’s primary constraint shifts to the Blanco to Thoreau segment next weekend. Air conditioning load is picking up in parts of Arizona, the trader said, but Southwest power prices are still cheap enough that spark spreads are not arousing much gas buying interest among power generators.

Unlike the Northeast utility staffer above, a Canadian producer believes that even though futures settled a little more than dime off the June contract’s high, the daily gain of nearly 20 cents should be sufficient to keep cash firming Tuesday. Snow is still occurring in the mountains of Alberta, but not in the low-lying areas Monday, he said. “We’re anxiously anticipating that two or three months we call ‘summer.'” Intra-Alberta basis was getting more negative relative to Nymex Monday, the producer noted.

Analyst Thomas Driscoll of Lehman Brothers forecasts an injection of 70 Bcf in the Energy Information Administration’s report Thursday. Such a volume would compare with injections of 62 Bcf last year and 79 Bcf in the five-year average. Meanwhile, Citigroup’s Kyle Cooper said his final estimation for this week’s report is “a build between 78 and 84 Bcf.”

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