Predictions of moderate temperatures in most areas — except for freezing lows in much of Canada, just on the other side of the border and occasionally in sections of the Rockies — along with the additional loss of industrial load associated with a holiday weekend and fulfilled anticipation of continued storage injections prompted sizeable cash market declines across the board Sunday.

The previous day’s rise of 1.6 cents by December futures was a negligible factor.

The long holiday weekend caused Wednesday trading to cover flows from Thursday through Monday. All of Friday’s losses were in double digits as they ranged from about 20 cents to nearly 45 cents.

Also, reporting on storage occurred a day earlier than usual due to the Thanksgiving holiday. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimated a 9 Bcf addition to inventories during the week ending Nov. 18, or about 10 Bcf less than consensus expectations of 19-20 Bcf. Sensing a slight bullish nature in the report, Nymex traders boosted prompt-month futures by 4.5 cents (see related story).

However, a Rockies producer suspected that EIA’s data didn’t “pass the smell test” with regard to his West Region. Calling Wednesday’s storage number “really bizarre,” he noted that consulting firm Bentek Energy had said cold western weather in the week covered by the report caused Rockies pipelines to be at capacity going west, while CIG prices had commanded a premium to Henry Hub nearly all of that week. “Yet EIA says that the West Region experienced an injection last week?” the producer said.

With just a week left before the official end of a 2011 hurricane season in which a large majority of named storms failed to make U.S. landfall, the Atlantic scene was quiet again Wednesday.

The five Gulf of Mexico pipelines operated by Enbridge may have trouble absorbing positive imbalances because of moderate temperatures expected during the holiday weekend, Enbridge said in asking shippers to keep nominations balanced and aligned with their production. NGPL was another pipeline adding to existing admonitions against running excess imbalances (see Transportation Notes). However, Westcoast went ahead with implementation of a low-linepack OFO Wednesday.

Interior California will see lows slipping into the 30s by Friday along with sections of the Rockies freezing in single-digit temperatures, according to the AccuWeather.com forecast posted on Kern River’s bulletin board. And the bulletin board of Northern Natural Gas illustrated the fickle nature of recent temperature fluctuations, noting that in comparison to the pipeline’s normal system-weighted temperature of 30 degrees in its Upper Midwest market area at this time of year, the averages were projected to hit 39 Wednesday and rise to 46 on both Thursday and Friday before diving back to the normal 30 Saturday.

Most market areas can expect seasonable to slightly warmer-than-normal weather during the week, although the Houston area was predicted to feel an unusually chilly high in the low 50s around Sunday with a low of not quite 40.

A Gulf Coast marketer said there was still a lot of bidweek trading being done Wednesday morning on IntercontinentalExchange (ICE), and he expected most people would try to finish December business before leaving for the holiday. The Chicago citygate fell to the mid $3.60s on ICE early Wednesday, about a nickel lower than Tuesday’s average, but it rose again about 2-3 cents by midday largely based on the storage report’s nominal bullishness, he said.

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