Except for further spikes at Northeast citygates and also on the two major Appalachian pipelines, there were few other price gains Wednesday despite especially harsh winter weather predicted to continue Thursday in northern U.S. market areas and Eastern Canada. The previous day’s 35.8-cent slide by February futures obviously had a negative influence on most of the cash market.

Traders also may have been looking ahead to some relief from the cold going into the weekend, and another source reaffirmed a Midcontinent producer’s contention on Tuesday that increasing pulls from storage were preventing the week’s cold siege from having a greater positive effect on the cash market.

A large majority of points were down from a little less than a nickel to about 35 cents, with the Gulf Coast, Rockies, Southwest basins and Western Canada tending to take most of the larger price hits. A few points, mostly in the Midwest and Midcontinent, joined the Northeast and Appalachia in gains ranging from a couple of pennies to about $4.40.

Although its average increase trailed several other Northeast delivery points Wednesday, Transco Zone 6’s New York pool recorded the day’s top quote of $23. The non-New York pool of Zone 6 and Iroquois Zone 2 were close behind in peaking at $22.

The Northeast is forecast to experience lows in single digits Thursday, with wind chill factors going below zero and a plentiful helping of snow. The Midwest has already been experiencing harsher cold than that for several days and can expect one more day of it before a warming trend arrives Friday.

The eastern half of the South can expect some serious heating load Thursday, as several locations such as Atlanta, Birmingham, AL, and Charlotte, NC, are predicted to see lows in the mid teens. It will be a bit milder in the region’s western end, but Houston and New Orleans are expected to have one of their relatively rare flirtations with the freezing level.

The West’s weather picture is relatively unchanged: cold in the Rockies and chilly to moderate in nearly all other sections.

In contrast to the tremendous chill in Eastern Canada, where Toronto is expected to see a low of about minus 10 and a high around zero Thursday, it’s relatively balmy in western sections of the country. Madison, WI-based Weather Central said Calgary can expect a high in the mid 40s with a low only slightly below freezing.

Southern Natural Gas became the latest pipeline to weigh in with a cold weather-related OFO (see Transportation Notes).

The Northern Natural Gas bulletin board indicated that the Midwest can start looking for some relief from its frigid weather ordeal starting Friday. A posting said Northern’s projected system weighted average temperature of minus 11 degrees Wednesday will rise only marginally to minus 10 Thursday, but then the pipeline looks for a big jump to plus 12 Friday.

The weather was “not all that bad” in the western end of the South as both Houston and the Dallas-Fort Worth area were peaking in the low 60s Wednesday, although they will get considerably colder Thursday, said a Gulf Coast trader. It looks like Northeast price strength will continue Thursday, she said, because she was seeing Transco Zone 6-New York being bid at $14 and offered at $20.25 for Friday on ICE.

She agreed with a producer’s comment a day earlier that it must be major storage withdrawals that have been suppressing prices in the non-Northeast market for the last couple of days. “And there’s still a lot of storage to be taken out,” she added.

It was “not a good sign for producers” when both February and March futures slipped a few cents below $5, the trader noted. However, even with mostly softer cash prices, demand was still fairly brisk, she said, because she was having no trouble selling her company’s producer clients’ gas.

A Northeast marketer said it must have been the screen weakness Tuesday that drove prices lower in most of the cash market. But his own market area was still going great guns price-wise, with quadruple-digit price averages soaring even higher Wednesday. He said he expect one more day of strong pricing — albeit not matching the spikes of the past two days — in the Northeast Thursday, but then it will be an “interesting” market Friday. It will be a holiday weekend with some lightening of heating load in store, he noted, so there is a good chance of softness everywhere then.

A Midwestern utility staffer said the cold may be really uncomfortable, “but we have to keep telling ourselves that it’s helping pay for our salaries.”

According to reports from 39 companies, 1,108 MMcf/d of Gulf of Mexico (GOM) gas production remained shut in Wednesday due to the impacts of hurricanes Gustav and Ike last year, Minerals Management Service (MMS). That’s 353 MMcf/d less than the 1,461 MMcf/d reported by the agency on Dec. 16. In the same period outages of oil production fell to 143,532 b/d from 183,861 b/d, MMS said, while the count of evacuated platforms dropped from 45 to 34. MMS is now releasing its Activity Statistics Updates on GOM shut-ins once a month; the next report is due Feb. 11.

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