Lakes

The Northeast, Great Lakes and Southwest areas of the United States will remain mostly warmer than normal over the next three months, continuing a trend that kept a lid on natural gas consumption and prices through most of the winter, according to forecasters at Andover, MA-based Weather Services International (WSI). But conditions may be ripe for a cooler-than-normal summer overall this year, WSI said.

Having lost prior-day screen support Monday and being on the verge of losing some cooling load in the Great Lakes market area Wednesday, prices fell across the board Tuesday. The fact that an expected warming trend in the Northeast is slow in developing also contributed to a bearish cash market mood.

TransCanada reported that Great Lakes ended Wednesday its declaration of force majeure that was announced in late February (see Daily GPI, Feb. 27 and March 10) and affected deliveries to TransCanada. As a result, TransCanada terminated its own force majeure declaration to firm shippers.

Snow and cold temperatures in the Great Lakes and the Northeastyesterday and some follow-through buying on Friday’s strength sentgas futures to a new all-time high of $6.360/MMBtu. December endedthe session up 14.9 cents to $6.249/MMBtu.

Great Lakes is holding an open season through July 31 for thesale of firm service from Emerson to Carlton in seven packagessubject to Right of First Refusal provisions of the pipeline’stariff (that is, each existing shipper can match the highest bidfor the capacity and retain it). Up to 70,927 Dth/d of capacitystarting Nov. 1, 2002 is available. Call a marketing representativeat (888) 275-3611 for more information.