Accompanied

It would seem that a day with forecast lows in single digits and the teens in many parts of Western Canada and the northern half of the U.S., accompanied by mercury levels due to bottom out around freezing in northerly reaches of the South, should be sufficient to cause rising spot gas prices. But it wasn’t so Wednesday.

Flat to barely higher numbers continued to dominate the cash market Wednesday as sub-freezing lows accompanied by snow in some cases were in the next-day forecasts for the Midwest, Northeast, the eastern half of the South, the Rockies and most of Canada. Gains ranged as high as a little more than a dime in Transco’s Zone 6-New York pool but were in single digits in nearly all instances.

Flat to barely higher numbers continued to dominate the cash market Wednesday as sub-freezing lows accompanied by snow in some cases were in the next-day forecasts for the Midwest, Northeast, the eastern half of the South, the Rockies and most of Canada. Gains ranged as high as a little more than a dime in Transco’s Zone 6-New York pool but were in single digits in nearly all instances.

The headline, “Texas Railroad Commission Tries to Block Renewable Transmission Lines,” which accompanied a story regarding some motions filed by the commission to intervene in several Public Utility Commission of Texas proceedings (see Daily GPI, Dec. 3), was misleading. The commission does not necessarily oppose Oncor’s plans to build renewable transmission lines across the state, and Oncor will work with the commission to address all of its concerns as it would with any intervenor in the process, a spokesperson said.

Despite the lack of supportive fundamentals and an electronic Globex trading blackout of just over an hour, traders pushed June natural gas futures convincingly higher on Friday to close at $3.546, up 17.3 cents from Thursday and 14.4 cents above the previous week’s close.

Freezing weather accompanied by copious amounts of snow had already settled in throughout much of the Northeast and Midwest and eastern parts of the South Monday and was due to continue Tuesday. The predictable result was sharply higher prices across the board in Monday’s launch of the March aftermarket.

A Transco Zone 6-NYC spike of more than 30 cents was accompanied by scattered and considerably smaller upticks at other points Monday, but for the most part flat to moderately softer prices reigned for the Christmas holiday. Most declines were in single digits, with only the Rockies dropping by more than a dime.

A California spike that sent border quotes skyrocketing as highas $33 and was accompanied by moderate firmness in the Southwestbasins stood in sharp contrast to a softer overall market Thursday.Outside the California/Southwest region, prices tended to rangefrom barely lower in the Rockies and at a few scattered Gulf Coastpoints to down 15-20 cents at Northeast citygates.

Weather that either was already bringing snow or was expected todo so soon in several regions, accompanied by some initial screensupport, pushed the cash market sharply higher Thursday at nearlyall points. Only the PG&E citygate and Southern Californiaborder registered drops amid overall gains of about 50 cents ormore. Many of the larger increases were clustered in the snowyRockies/Pacific Northwest.