Amounts

A couple of Northeast citygates averaged more than $37 Wednesday as prices rose at all points — mostly by large amounts. Traders returned from the long New Year’s weekend to find much of the U.S. and Canada enduring deep-freeze conditions that were most intense in the eastern halves of both nations and could be expected to last into Thursday.

Prices rallied by mostly small amounts at a majority of points Thursday, deriving support from the previous day’s 9.1-cent screen gain, a smidgen of heating load in the Rockies and areas near the Canadian border, and not much else. Moderate mid-October temperatures dominate much of the weather picture, and evidence continues to mount that storage injection capacity has grown very scarce.

The Walker Ridge in the Lower Tertiary of the deepwater Gulf of Mexico (GOM), which may — or may not — hold vast amounts of oil and natural gas reserves, captured the highest bid for a block in the Minerals Management Service’s (MMS) Central GOM sale last week.

The Walker Ridge in the Lower Tertiary of the deepwater Gulf of Mexico (GOM), which may — or may not — hold vast amounts of oil and natural gas reserves, captured the highest bid for a block in the Minerals Management Service’s (MMS) Central GOM sale on Wednesday.

Prices soared by triple-digit amounts in the Rockies Thursday as the regional market continued a recovery from extreme weakness that featured low-end quotes of less than a dime in the previous two days. Most points elsewhere achieved moderate gains, but Thursday was likely to be the last day of this week’s overall market advances.

Most of the cash market continued to rise Wednesday, but by notably smaller amounts than the day before. With heat levels greatly increasing in much of the West, particularly in inland California, Rockies gas found enough cooling load to arrest its recent slide into sub-$1 averages and cause large rebounds.

Prices fell by large amounts at all points Monday, and the market carnage is expected to continue Tuesday after September futures plummeted by nearly a dollar when it became apparent that powerful Hurricane Dean is nearly certain to pass well to the south of U.S. offshore production interests. Cooling load was still strong in the South and Southwest, but it remained too moderate in the Northeast, Midwest and other parts of the West to lend much support to the cash market.

As a marketer had predicted a day earlier, a majority of the cash market was able to continue ascending Tuesday — but by considerably smaller amounts (except in the rebounding Rockies) than on Monday. In addition, there were more flat to softer points as cooling trends began to reduce power generation demand in key northern market areas.

Heat levels forecast for Wednesday are rising by sufficient amounts in enough areas to produce rising prices at most points Tuesday. July futures continued to buck the trend by dropping another 6.3 cents Tuesday.