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Despite still having a record level of natural gas in storage for this time of year, analysts at Goldman Sachs say the relatively low trading range of $3.90 to $4.40/MMBtu that the natural gas futures market occupied until early June combined with warm weather has led to tighter fundamentals.

Texas oil and gas operators are adopting the the Railroad Commission of Texas’ (RRC) latest electronic reporting system, having filed more than 1,000 well completion reports online through the commission’s website since the system was launched statewide in April.

After having some impact on cash deals done on Thursday, the bearish natural gas storage report and the resulting decline natural gas futures values helped lead the cash market to no change or lower on Friday at all U.S. points. A few Canadian points ticked higher a couple of pennies, potentially due to the outage of the Sable Offshore Energy Project.

Xcel Energy anticipates having Colorado regulatory decisions later this year on its purchase of two natural gas-fired generation plants and its plans to retrofit or replace up to 900 MW of coal-fired generation in the Denver area. The Minneapolis-based utility holding company also expects to start commercial operations at its Comanche III coal-fired plant in Pueblo, CO, in May.

With a siege of frigid weather in the East not only showing little sign of letting up soon, and even strengthening by New Year’s Day, and the South having returned to lows on either side of freezing over the weekend, multi-dollar spikes in the Northeast led an across-the-board advance by the spot market Monday.

Three associations representing electric and natural gas utilities and power providers have called on Congress to exempt end-users from having to clear over-the-counter (OTC) derivative transactions that are used to hedge against commodity price risk. While supporting the clearing of derivative transactions involving large dealers in OTC legislation being considered by Congress, they said they opposed any mandate requiring “all or most” OTC derivative transactions to be centrally cleared or traded on regulated exchanges, saying this ultimately would increase prices to retail gas and electric customers.

With most market participants having finished their December natural gas futures business by last week, the prompt-month contract had a mostly uneventful ride into expiration on Tuesday. December natural gas traded between $4.361 and $4.610 on low volume before going off the board at $4.486, up 1.3 cents from Monday’s finish. The January contract closed the day at $4.766, down 2.5 cents.

Three associations representing electric and natural gas utilities and power providers have called on Congress to exempt end-users from having to clear and trade on regulated exchanges over-the-counter (OTC) derivative transactions that are used to hedge against commodity price risk. While supporting the clearing of derivative transactions involving large dealers in OTC legislation being considered by Congress, they said they opposed any mandate requiring “all or most” OTC derivative transactions to be centrally cleared or traded on regulated exchanges, saying this ultimately would increase prices to retail gas and electric customers.

Prices resumed a mostly moderate climb Monday after having last week’s four-day series of spikes interrupted Friday. Although cold weather was easing a bit after setting date-specific records for low temperatures over the weekend, there was still quite a bit of chill in northern forecasts to keep heating load fairly strong.