Only the Florida citygate’s drop of a quarter prevented an across the board cash rally Thursday that was largely abetted by a 21.1-cent gain in November futures the day before and to a lesser degree by modest to occasionally substantial heating load in most areas outside the desert Southwest.

A large majority of Thursday’s gains, which ranged from about a nickel to a little more than 60 cents, were in double digits, and most of those were around 30 cents or more.

A week after coming in below the range of prior estimates, the Energy Information Administration handily exceeded expectations in reporting a 68 Bcf storage injection for the week ending Oct. 19. Though Nymex traders acknowledged the obvious bearishness of such a report by pushing natural gas futures briefly into negative territory following its release, super-strength in the nearby crude oil pit proved impossible to ignore. November natural gas eventually wound up 21.6 cents higher, buoyed by an awesome crude run-up of more than $3 that established a new all-time high settlement of $90.46/bbl and in the process set an intraday record of $90.60. Wednesday’s report of unexpected large declines in petroleum product inventories and new geopolitical tensions Thursday fueled the oil spike (see futures story).

The PG&E citygate and Southern California border recorded increases of about 20 and 10 cents, respectively, despite high-linepack OFOs being issued for Friday by both PG&E and SoCalGas (see Transportation Notes).

The Florida citygate softness seemed appropriate in light of Florida Gas Transmission (FGT) ending an Overage Alert Day Thursday. However, production-area prices into FGT were strong in all three zones, with Florida Gas Zone 2 seeing Thursday’s second-largest uptick of about 55 cents.

Cheyenne Hub led the overall rally as a major cold spell is about to invade the Rockies. Cheyenne, WY, and Denver were expected to see Thursday’s highs of 69-75 degrees drop by about 20 degrees Friday, with Cheyenne forecast to have a sub-freezing low. Lows below the freezing level were also predicted for the Upper Plains, and although slight warming trends were due in the South, Midwest and parts of the Northeast, those areas are expected to retain enough chill to keep at least a modicum of heating load in effect.

A Northeast marketer said that in daily trading Gulf Coast-Northeast spreads were too tight for comfort earlier this month, but have been “coming into the money again” this week. His company initiated November bidweek business Thursday, and he reported doing basis deals of plus 70-71 cents at the Algonquin citygate and of plus 64-65 cents at Tennessee Zone 6. Basis had been a couple of pennies stronger early Thursday, he said, but it fell back along with the screen when the storage report came out. He could see no reason for the later recovery of gas futures other than being tied to the skyrocketing crude oil contract.

A Southern utility buyer said the region’s cold spell this week had arrived “just in time” for his company. It had gotten cold enough to have furnaces turned on, which allowed storage withdrawals to ease a lack of injection space, he said. The utility now has a little wiggle space again in its storage accounts, he added.

Forecasts call for the buyer’s area to warm up a little Saturday, he said, but then it’s back to cooler than normal for this time of year (low 60s) again Sunday and Monday. The utility has enough November-March supply termed up that it won’t buy any monthly baseload for November, he said; it’s rare for his company to buy any 30-day supplies during the winter.

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