Looking much like the previous day’s market, prices fell at a large majority of points Friday while soaring at several Northeast citygates. The main difference was that all of Thursday’s Northeast gains were less than a dollar, but on Friday several were in triple digits.

The extra decline of industrial demand associated with a long holiday weekend and the previous day’s 7.7-cent loss by February futures were bearish factors for the cash market. Because of Martin Luther King Day occurring Monday, Friday’s cash deals covered flows from Saturday through Tuesday.

Most points, including a few in the Northeast, recorded losses ranging from 2-3 cents to about a dime. Some locations in the Arizona/Nevada, California, Western Canada and Midwest markets joined the Northeast in running against the overall price movement grain with flat to up about $2.85 averages.

Both Transco’s Zone 6-New York pool and the Algonquin citygate claimed top quotes of $9, but Algonquin’s average in the mid $7.30s was about 70 cents above that of the New York area. Numbers for Algonquin receipts, Dracut and Tennessee Zone 6 (both Lines 200 and 300) also surpassed the Transco point.

The drop of 2.7 cents by prompt-month futures signifies continued, but fairly mild, negative guidance for cash traders when they return for post-holiday business Tuesday (see related story).

While weekend temperatures were expected to keep inching downward in the Northeast, most of the South could expect the start of a general warming trend following dustings of snow Thursday and Friday in the southern Appalachians and elevated sections of eastern Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia.

Snow was expected to further extend transportation hassles and other problems in the Midwest, although cold temperatures were predicted to remain fairly static. Other than some warming in the Rockies, it was largely a status quo forecast for the West: freezing lows in the Rockies and Western Canada along with parts of the Upper Plains and Pacific Northwest, and cool but still relatively moderate in the rest of the region. Although temperatures were on a downhill slide in Southern California, Los Angeles was predicted to still be peaking in the upper 60s Sunday.

The Baker Hughes Rotary Rig Count said gas-oriented drilling activity was down to a 24-month low after falling by 20 rigs to 791 during the week ending Jan. 13.

Going into the weekend there were several restrictions against negative imbalances by pipelines serving the Northeast, and Florida Gas Transmission added an Overage Alert Day (see Transportation Notes) to capacity allocations by Southern in the Southeast. However, MRT’s System Protection Warning was about the only restriction of substance in the Midwest, where severe winter conditions had begun Thursday and were expected to extend through the weekend.

A Midwest utility buyer reported high throughput currently with area temperatures falling into the mid teens Friday, but the company needed a sustained period of frigid conditions to help it work off available supplies. However, unlike some other utility buyers, he said his company did not expect to sell off excess storage gas for prices much less than those at which it was purchased last summer.

Actually, he added, the market probably could have sub-zero “wrath of God” temperatures for the rest of the waning winter and still have plenty of gas left in storage.

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