Last Thursday’s EIA US natural gas storage report showed that stockpiles were 1.5% lower than the previous year, but still 6.5% above the 5 year average. While supplies are still healthy, this week’s pattern in the US should still provide some support to spot futures, with another week of strong heating demand across the primary population centers. The bigger opportunity in the energy sector this week may come from oil as the Alaskan pipeline leak may give the market a boost after seeing it drop below 90 for a few sessions. The closure of the Trans-Alaska pipeline system has crude futures up 2.2%; while most estimates at this stage do not expect thee pipeline to be down for an extended period of time (remember the Gulf leak earlier this year), production losses will start to weight into futures each day that operations are down. BP is down 2% in pre-market activity.