Several points in the Northeast, Midwest, Gulf Coast, Pacific Northwest and Western Canada were flat or registered gains Friday, but for the most part softness continued to reign supreme. The previous day’s screen loss of 8.6 cents played a role, but it was mostly the fact that Friday deals were done for Monday only, when warming trends were expected to resume in many areas, that kept Friday’s winter storms from affecting the cash market positively.

A couple of Northeast delivery points were taking triple-digit hits amid overall losses ranging from 2-3 cents to about $1.90, but most of them were about a dime or less. Flat to about 35 cents higher numbers were in the rest of the market.

After beginning the day about a dime higher, March futures eventually sank to a loss of 0.7 cent on the day (see related story).

Icy conditions moving into the South and Mid-Atlantic Saturday, along with lows from about zero to the teens in much of the Midwest and Northeast, mattered little to the cash market, since they had already been accounted for in Thursday’s trading for Friday-Sunday flows. Even the Rockies had few weather concerns, with Denver due to expect a relatively balmy upper 40s high.

Southwest Gas lifted a Hold Burn to Scheduled Quantities notice that had been issued due to high linepack on upstream pipelines (see Transportation Notes). One of those upstream pipes, Kern River, said linepack had returned to normal Thursday after being at maximum target levels since the previous Sunday. El Paso also said linepack was back to normal Friday after previously high levels had prompted it to warn Thursday of a potential Strained Operating Condition.

Storage withdrawals are advancing in the West. Questar said its Clay Basin facility as of Thursday was down to 30,582,638 Dth, or 59.52%, of total working gas inventory of 51,386,250 Dth. That compared with 29,514,076 Dth (57.44%) at the end of January 2009, Questar said.

“This is really grim,” said a Rockies producer commenting on the price prospects from the most recent EIA-914 data by the Energy Information Administration. “November production in the Lower 48 states was actually up a little from October even with some lost production in the Gulf” of Mexico.

Saying the “big snowstorm” had largely missed the Rockies, the producer said the Denver areas has been in the low 40s lately, which he called “about normal.”

Noting the restoration of most service to delivery points in the Clarington, OH terminus of Rockies Express (REX), the producer said it was “nice to see REX getting more complete. The Henry Hub-CIG differential dropped to just 12 cents [Thursday], and CIG was actually higher than the March [futures] contract. You don’t see that very often.”

Echoing other sources, a Gulf Coast producer said it was an “uneventful” bidweek; “so slow with little buying,” he complained. A lot of end-users and utilities had already termed up business, he said; also, they were hearing conflicting reports about whether it would be a mild or cold February. A lot of people said they needed to use up storage, getting their accounts down to a “reasonable level” by the end of February, he said.

Unless a really major cold snap happens, the producer said he is looking for a mostly softer February.

A Northeast utility buyer reinforced the producer’s perception, saying “it’s looking pretty smooth for the rest of winter” on storage. The weekend will stay cold, he said, but temperatures should start warming up again by Monday. Bidweek was a nonevent as far as he was concerned; he relied on term contracts and didn’t buy any baseload.

An end-user in the Midwest who buys gas for plants across the U.S. said it was “not so bad today [Friday] because it’s sunny.” There’s a huge difference between five and 20 degrees. Despite many perceptions, he said he had heard “a couple of folks” saying the second half of February may be colder than usual, “but who knows?” He also used the term “uneventful” in describing bidweek, saying there was plenty of gas available.

©Copyright 2010Intelligence Press Inc. All rights reserved. The preceding news reportmay not be republished or redistributed, in whole or in part, in anyform, without prior written consent of Intelligence Press, Inc.