Spur

Getting significant boosts from both the screen and further revision in thinking about how cold this week’s weather will be, prices were in major rebound mode Monday. Double-digit gains were recorded across the board, with several points in both the East and West seeing upticks in the vicinity of 40 cents.

Traders have said several times in recent weeks that the cash market looks to remain rather stagnant until something comes along to jolt it out of its torpor — something like a Gulf of Mexico hurricane, major aberration in storage injection data, or sustained heavy air conditioning load outside the Deep South and the desert Southwest.

You’ve got to like the “I will not be pushed” mentality exhibited by the market Wednesday. Less than 24 hours after Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told Congress that the nation has a long-term gas supply problem, natural gas futures turned lower as traders liquidated longs in hopes of taking advantage of short-term bearish rewards.

Though chilly temperatures reigned that day along the northern tier of states and in Eastern Canada, prices softened at nearly all points Thursday on expectations of weather moderation and the demand slump of a holiday-lengthened weekend. Flat to mildly higher numbers in the Rockies compared with drops elsewhere that ranged from barely lower to down more than half a dollar in the Northeast.

Repeal of the Public Utility Holding Company Act (PUHCA) is one of the most important things the next Congress can do to spur recovery of the power industry, according to former FERC Chair Elizabeth Moler. Repeal would remove a barrier to capital and help repair the “financial carnage that has afflicted many power companies this year.”

High temperatures in nearly every section of the U.S. except the Midwest and Upper Plains, along with strong energy futures, generated a run-up in gas prices at all points Monday.

The long term effects of Enron’s collapse “will be good, not bad,” in that it will spur changes to “put corporate governance back on track,” Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve, testified before Congress Wednesday. The problems with Enron will result in a necessary restructuring of corporate governance that “will be favorable to the long term outlook.”

After various fits and starts surrounding the issue over a number of months, California regulators Thursday established an alternative demand stand-by charge, called a “peaking rate,” for Southern California Gas Co., which could open up the utility to “economic bypass” by interstate pipeline projects lined up and ready to go at the border. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) rejected the utility’s own proposal as “anti-competitive.”

The return of some extra heat, along with the general resumption of business-related demand after a weekend, were enough to generate a moderately strong rebound in the cash market Monday. Most of the increases ranged between a nickel and a quarter, but the removal of LDC OFOs allowed dollar-plus jumps at all California points except Malin.