Depending largely on the previous Friday’s 17.3-cent run-up by June futures and the return of industrial load from its typical weekend time-out, prices were up across the board Monday. One source thought a modestly bullish upturn in general economic developments may have been an additional boon for the spot market.

A large majority of Monday’s upticks ranging from about a nickel to a little more than 35 cents were in double digits. Although there was no major cold weather in their regional forecasts, Northeast and Midwest citygates tended to record most of the largest gains.

Tuesday’s cash market will continue to have prior-day screen support after the June futures contract tacked on another 17.9 cents Monday (see related story).

Although the temperature outlook had not changed significantly since Friday, there were a few pipeline hints that weather-based demand might be getting a bit stronger. Transco and Tennessee were lifting OFOs that had been based on mild market-area conditions, and Florida Gas Transmission had an Overage Alert Day in effect for the third straight day Monday due to hot forecasts in Florida (see Transportation Notes).

Spring has sprung in abundance, and not even the Rockies can expect to see freezing weather Tuesday. Alberta’s capital city of Edmonton was due to hit 32, according to the Weather Central forecasting firm, but Calgary should enjoy a relatively moderate low end of 37.

Although the South is a little cooler than last week, one area seeing a distinct increase in power generation load is the desert Southwest. Phoenix-area temperatures will peak just below 100 Tuesday, Weather Central said.

A Canadian producer thought the firmness in natural gas futures was abetted by higher crude oil prices, and said energy futures in general got a boost from “a touch” of more positive economic news. “People are starting to talk a little more about [financial] recovery,” he said. He also suspected that the rig count, which has been dwindling so rapidly in recent months, might finally be starting to have an impact in tightening the supply-demand balance.

The producer certainly didn’t count much on near-term weather having much price-boosting ability, although he did note that the hot forecasts in the Southwest likely were raising air conditioning demand. Some storage buying may have been part of Monday’s increases, he said. Traders could try to play the outer-month basis spread on storage injections, he said, but with prices as low as they are now it’s likely that quite a few don’t think it’s worth the trouble.

Her Midwestern utility is experiencing the typical doldrums of a typical May shoulder month, one fuel buyer said. With daytime temperatures in the 70s and 50s readings at night, heating load has disappeared and very little gas-fired power generation is getting dispatched, she said. In addition, this is what she called Northern Natural Gas’ “dead month” for storage; the utility could make injections into the pipeline’s facilities, the buyer said, but it would be at costly interruptible rates. It’s more economic to wait until June and take advantage of the utility’s firm storage services that will be available then.

For the coming weekend into early next week, the National Weather Service’s six- to 10-day forecast looks for above-normal temperatures dominating most of the southern half of the U.S., with the above-normal forecast receding into the southern end of California at the western end. The agency expects below-normal readings from New England through the upper end of the Mid-Atlantic to extend through most of the Midwest into central North Dakota. It also predicted below-normal conditions from most of Northern California through the Pacific Northwest through the western half of Montana, excluding normal temperatures in northwestern Oregon and the western half of Washington state.

A headlong plunge in the U.S. tally of active gas-seeking drilling rigs by the Baker Hughes Rotary Rig Count (https://intelligencepress.com/features/bakerhughes/) during most weeks in the last several months came to a near-halt in the week ending May 1. Baker Hughes said one rig was added in the Gulf of Mexico, but that was offset by a loss of two onshore. Its latest count was down 8% from a month ago and 50% less than the year-earlier number.

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