The cash market had plenty of negative guidance in recording double-digit losses across the board Thursday. The pleasantly seasonable mid-spring conditions that dominate the current weather picture, a lengthy futures slide that continued Thursday, and the usual drop in industrial load that lowers weekend volumes all added to a powerful price depressant.

Due to the transition to a new month Monday, Thursday’s deals were done for flows through Sunday. Friday’s trading will involve Monday-only flows.

Large losses were fairly consistent across the various market areas in ranging from about 15 cents to nearly 60 cents. NGPL-Louisiana was the only point with a decline of less than 20 cents.

The Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) estimate of an 80 Bcf storage build for the week ending April 21 fitted pretty well with prior expectations. However, an additional 10 Bcf upward revision of previous inventory — reportedly due to a resubmission of data by Dominion and a CenterPoint reclassification of base gas to working gas (see futures story) — tipped the EIA report into bearish territory for Nymex traders. They sent natural gas futures nearly half a dollar lower in the June contract’s prompt-month debut (of course, continuing weakness in the petroleum product offerings also contributed to the gas decline).

The $6.805 daily settlement marked a return to screen levels not seen since late May 2005, prior to the steep run-up in prices that dominated the second half of last year.

The revision had been anticipated by market sources (see Daily GPI, April 27).

The South will be mostly mild to cool for a while longer. Although temperatures were starting to rise again Thursday at the region’s western end, stormy weather will keep a slight chill going through the end of the weekend in its more easterly sections. Highs in the 50s are likely in Atlanta Sunday, according to The Weather Channel (TWC).

A lot of weekend precipitation is due for the Midwest also. It and the Northeast are a bit cooler than usual for this time of the year, but chances for significant heating load are considered slim to none. A strong cold front will be lowering temperatures in the Pacific Northwest as next week begins, TWC said, but most of the West will feel above average weekend temperatures.

Symptomatic of how the gas market misses the support from air conditioning load in the South that it lost this week was Southern Natural Gas saying a Type 6 OFO for long imbalances is “highly likely” Saturday. Also, Florida Gas Transmission lifted a low-linepack restriction (see Transportation Notes).

Natural gas futures are “still playing the good old boy” in following crude oil numbers down, said a Northeast-based trader, adding that the “weekend effect” played a role in Thursday’s cash softness. He saw a small chance of a modest price recovery Friday because of the lack of weekend flow involved, but “since we’re mirroring the screen lately,” Thursday’s plunge might negate any possibility of a rebound. Calling regional weather “absolutely beautiful this [Thursday] morning,” the trader noted that it had gotten chillier again in the Northeast, “but I’d like to have this kind of weather all year.”

He said his company had wrapped up bidweek activity Wednesday, but he was aware of “some stragglers” still doing May business Thursday. They tend to want to do mostly indexed deals this late in the game, so any May trading being done Thursday and Friday should have little impact on first-of-month indexes, he said.

“The screen was coming down hard again today,” commented a Northeast utility buyer. It has been cool enough in his area lately that the utility has actually been making small withdrawals from storage to keep from buying new gas, he said. There was no problem with that because the company was a little ahead of its injection schedule anyway, he added. He bought some May baseload gas, but said he also will play the day-to-day market for price flexibility reasons.

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