Northeast spikes, including one of about a dollar by Transco Zone 6-New York, led further price increases at a large majority of points Tuesday as widespread frigid weather continued to stoke major heating load and prompted some analysts to predict that a very large storage withdrawal will be reported for the preceding week. The 16.9-cent rise by January futures a day earlier also helped boost Tuesday’s cash market.

Most of the locations that were flat to down nearly 35 cents were in the West, where temperatures are starting to moderate a bit along the West Coast and in the desert Southwest and Western Canada. A few Midwest citygates also were flat despite lows still sinking into the upper teens and 20s; that represented a modest warming trend for the region.

Otherwise prices realized upticks ranging from 2-3 cents to about a dollar.

Cash quotes can count on more screen support Wednesday after prompt-month futures rose another 19.1 cents Tuesday (see related story).

Slightly milder conditions are beginning to return in the lower South, but lows from the mid 20s through mid 30s are forecast to continue for a while longer a bit farther north from Oklahoma through Georgia and the Carolinas.

The Northeast will turn “blustery and colder” Wednesday and Thursday, The Weather Channel said, with afternoon wind chills running from zero to 20 above in northern sections and from 20 to 40 farther south. Some areas could pick up as much as six to 10 inches of snow by Wednesday night.

Lows remaining in the mid 20s allowed the Rockies to record most of the largest gains outside the Northeast.

A producer noted that he would have expected Appalachian pricing to be stronger than it was Tuesday based on the Northeast’s bone-chilling cold and the strength of regional citygates.

He expects prices to keep moving higher through Thursday but said it might be kind of “iffy” on whether this week’s bullishness can be sustained Friday. “You always have to question” whether the industrial demand losses associated with a weekend market will offset the currently heavy heating load, he said.

The producer said he thinks the extended outage of five Rockies Express (REX) delivery points in the Clarington, OH, terminus area (see Daily GPI, Nov. 23) has scared away some buyers from making term deals using REX capacity. “They likely want to see more consistent service at those meters” before making trade commitments there, he said.

A utility buyer in the South said his company is seeing “good, healthy winter load” with sub-freezing lows having occupied his area going back through last week but added that the demand is “manageable.” It’s certainly benefiting the utility’s bottom line, he added, because after all, throughput “is where companies like us” make their money.

Southern Natural Gas reflects how the widespread cold snap has helped some storage operators step back from the brink of having no injection capacity left. As of last Thursday the pipeline’s two storage facilities contained 54.2 Bcf of working gas, or 90% of their total capacity of 60 Bcf, Southern said. A week earlier (Dec. 3) there was 57.1 Bcf (95% full) stashed away, it said.

Noting that early forecasts range from 160 Bcf to 210 Bcf, Strategic Energy & Economic Research analyst Ron Denhardt projects the report of a 184 Bcf storage withdrawal for the week ending Dec. 11. He added that the December weather outlook “is bullish.” Cameron Horwitz of SunTrust Robinson Humphrey looks for a nearly identical pull of 185 Bcf, saying there was an approximate week-to-week increase of 50% in heating degree days and a 3 Bcf/d rise in gas-fired power generation; they were partly offset by gains of about 500 MMcf/d each in Canadian imports and liquefied natural gas sendout.

Stephen Smith of Stephen Smith Energy Associates also expects a 185 Bcf withdrawal, which he said is up from his previous estimate of 173 Bcf.

During the Dec. 21-25 period the National Weather Service (NWS) expects below-normal temperatures south and east of a line running westward along the northern edge of Massachusetts and through central New York to eastern Nebraska before curving to the south through western Kansas, the Oklahoma Panhandle and West Texas. In its six- to 10-day forecast posted Tuesday afternoon, NWS predicted above-normal readings for northern Minnesota and northeastern North Dakota, along with everywhere west of a line arcing to the southeast from northern Oregon to eastern Arizona.

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