Cash prices fell across the board Wednesday, succumbing to the previous day’s half dollar-plus futures loss along with moderate warming trends continuing through Thursday in most of the East and temperatures largely holding steady in much of the West.

Dollar-plus plunges were common in the Midcontinent and West as losses ranged from about a quarter to $1.55 or so. Despite the big losses, a large majority of points were still trading at premiums to first-of-month indexes.

A lack of futures support for the cash market will continue at least one more day as the December natural gas contract dropped another 30 cents amid a pounding of Nymex’s entire energy complex (see related story).

Temperatures will be rising several degrees Thursday at most locations in the South, Northeast and Midcontinent/Midwest, with few areas having any substantive heating load. There was some in the Rockies, as the forecasts for Denver and Cheyenne, WY, called for lows on either side of freezing Thursday. However, that was far from enough to soak up regional production as the rest of the West will range from just chilly to moderately warm.

The market could very well see a turnaround Friday, at least in the East. Western weather is predicted to remain fairly moderate for the most part into the weekend. But after warming trends continue through Friday in eastern markets, cold fronts will bring a sharp dip in temperatures starting Saturday, according to The Weather Channel (TWC). The change will come earliest in the Upper Midwest, TWC said, with a front turning rain showers to snow showers over Minnesota, Wisconsin and northern Michigan Friday.

Malin and the PG&E citygate recorded relatively modest declines, even with PG&E projecting linepack on its California Gas Transmission system starting to approach and then exceed its maximum target levels Thursday through Saturday. In addition, PG&E began what it calls a “quiet period” Monday at its McDonald Island storage field; injections will be unavailable there through about Nov. 21.

The past week saw a minuscule reduction of hurricane-related production outages in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM). Based on reports from 59 companies (down from 62 a week earlier), Minerals Management Service (MMS) 2,062 MMcf/d remained off-line Wednesday — only 73 MMcf/d less than on the previous Wednesday. The pace of restoring GOM crude oil output was similarly snail-like; the MMS tally of 245,032 b/d Wednesday was down only 1,071 b/d from last week’s report. At least platforms are being repopulated more rapidly; the 62 reported as still evacuated Wednesday was seven fewer than in the previous report.

It’s pretty much a certainty that the cash market will be softer again Thursday, said a Midcontinent producer. Besides Wednesday’s screen weakness, he could see little gas demand in his region “or anywhere.” Prices must wait until Friday to rally based on the forecasts of weekend cold, he added. He said the Midcontinent will get colder but not quite freezing, and then although very cold weather is expected to continue into next week in much of the East, his own region can anticipate a little warm-up again.

The producer said there’s an adage that if it doesn’t get very cold by Nov. 15, suppliers can pretty much write off the winter market. That may happen for much of the East, he said, but the Midcontinent pipes will continue to be stuffed with gas for the foreseeable future. He reported that one pipeline executive told him that “it’s going to be a brutal market” for Thanksgiving weekend.

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