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Southern California Gas declared an OFO for the Evening Cycle of Wednesday.

Despite an overwhelming preponderance of bearish fundamental information available Friday, natural gas futures traders played it safe, electing to gently cover shorts on the off chance that weather forecasts would offer a bullish surprise when trading resumed Sunday evening and Monday morning.

The months of June and July were the “low water mark” for Enterprise Products Partners LP’s natural gas liquids (NGLs) business — especially for ethane — but CEO O.S. “Dub” Andras said Monday he was “encouraged and cautiously optimistic” in recent activity for liquids.

Mired in a sea of bearish news, natural gas futures traders glommed on to the only available bullish factor Wednesday and rode a buying wave created by an early spike in the nearby crude oil market. The October natural gas contract notched a new $4.66 high for the week by 11 a.m. EDT. Modest position squaring was seen in the afternoon, which allowed prices to ease back to finish the session at $4.588, a 7.7-cent advance on the day.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last week issued a controversial equipment replacement provision to the Clean Air Act’s New Source Review (NSR) permitting program, which could allow an estimated 17,000 power plants, refineries, chemical plants, pulp and paper mills and other industries to replace equipment without installing more emission controls — even if the new equipment increases pollution.

Due to inspection of Unit #4 at the Kemmerer (WY) Station, there will be no Park or Loan service available Monday through Friday this week, Northwest said.

Because the Gallup Electric Compressor Station will not be available for the April 11 gas day, Transwestern will allocate the San Juan Lateral to about 700,000 MMBtu/d. The Blanco-Thoreau segment of the lateral had been expected to be up to 800,000 MMBtu/d of capacity by now following a five-day total outage earlier this month (see Daily GPI, March 28), but compressor problems have been causing daily allocations. Northwest cautioned shippers that Transwestern’s allocations “could still cause back-ups on Northwest.”

With little fresh news available to prop it up, natural gas futures sagged to new 10-week lows Tuesday afternoon as traders contemplated whether they would rather be long or short gas for the entire month of April at a price near the $5.00 level. A rebound at the closing bell was too little and too late for the prompt month which closed beneath key support, down 17.6 cents for the session at $5.077. April will expire at 2:30 p.m. EST Thursday.

There’s plenty of capital available for investment in the transmission sector, but that money isn’t flowing more freely because of a lack of certainty that continues to permeate much of the power industry, a Senate hearing looking at the financial condition of the electric market was told last Tuesday.