Weekend prices were soft as expected, but probably fell less than many traders were anticipating. Except for sizeable losses of 20-30 cents or more in the Rockies/San Juan and at PG&E-related points, nearly all of Friday’s declines were 15 cents or less, and a majority of those were around a nickel.

The fuel buyer for a Northeast utility said he had only one fixed-price deal to report, “so that’s pretty indicative of weak demand around here.” Suppliers seemed to realize that, he said, “because we got very few calls even offering us gas.” Temperatures in the region were due to remain on the cool side over the weekend, the buyer added, yielding little gas load for either air conditioning or heating.

A Midcontinent trader reported seeing a small push higher in cash near deadline, but said it wasn’t as large as Thursday’s late rally. Any time ANR or Panhandle Eastern offers got below $4 for even an instant Friday, people would snap them up immediately, forming an effective floor of $3.99 for those pipes, the trader said.

“That’s what a second straight day of zero-tolerance OFOs will do for you,” a western source commented about PG&E citygates averaging just under $4 Friday and being near parity with border-PG&E numbers that also were in the high $3.90s. Before Friday, it had been precisely one year since PG&E gate quotes were consistently less than $4 (May 2000). There was an isolated instance when the gate fell to an average of $3.57 in trading for the July 8-9, 2000 weekend, but that was down from $4.15 the day before, and prices soared back to $4.49 following the weekend. Much like the current situation, it was a fourth day of high-linepack OFOs by the utility that sent citygates below $4 briefly last July.

The impact of the Northern California price weakness carried over into the Rockies, where some pipes registered quotes as low as the $2.30s.

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