Sources attributed moderate gains in most of the cash market Thursday to storage buying, carryover effect from the screen’s previous-day increase of a little more than a dime and — yes, a little bit of weather, both hot and cold.

For a majority of points in all regions, upticks from about a nickel to 20 cents were the rule. San Juan Basin, up more than 40 cents, was the major exception on the stronger end, while small declines in the Rockies and at a few scattered eastern points ran against the grain of the overall market.

The Rockies market’s price jubilation over the extra capacity provided by Kern River’s May 1 expansion start-up appeared to wear off pretty quickly. Only a day after registering jumps of a dollar or so, several pipes in the area were mildly softer Thursday, with Kern River itself leading the pack with a dip of about a dime.

Midcontinent/Midwest points tended to garner the lion’s share of the larger non-San Juan gains. A marketer said he considered their strength to be based more on storage injection demand rather than cooler weather. “Nobody in Chicago mentioned anything about it getting cold,” he added, but acknowledged that there “should be a little bit of heating load” with low temperatures in the upper 30s and mid 40s in the Midwest market area. However, when people are coming out of 30-degree weather in the not-too-distant past, “when it gets to a high of around 60 it’s T-shirt time,” the marketer said.

A Northeast utility buyer conceded that he was a little out of touch with Thursday’s trading but thought the screen’s gain the day before was having a delayed effect on the cash market. He certainly didn’t see anything in mild weather to justify price increases. The buyer said there seemed to be even less trading liquidity than usual with a lot of people going to a Nymex “open house” Thursday.

Meanwhile, a marketer commented that “there is some weather load” in the form of gradually increasing heat in the South. She and another trader reported that power generation demand was strong in the intrastate Texas market with temperatures starting to approach 90 degrees. That helped support Permian/Waha prices, with many traders stranding their westbound transportation from the Permian Basin to sell gas into Texas and the Midcontinent instead, they said.

However, they and sources in other markets reported that prices were falling near the end of the session, largely in response to the screen’s bearish response to the morning storage report. “That’s a good sign of weekend softness” in Friday’s trading, one said.

The EIA said 57 Bcf was taken from storage last week, which was near the high end of the range of previous guesses and exceeded most expectations. Futures prices quickly fell about a dime and then hovered around that level for the rest of the day.

Florida Gas Transmission did not follow through on Wednesday’s advisory that it might issue an Overage Alert Day notice, but Florida citygates still rose about a nickel.

A marketer said he is seeing a slight shift in perceptions of storage “seasons,” adding that he expects this coming November will be an injection month with almost no withdrawals. Price bulls probably will use the end-of-October inventory number to try to throw some fear into the market, “but I tend to think in terms of not ‘where did we get to in storage by the end of October, but rather where did we get to by the end of injection season,'” he said. The old “Novee [November]-March and April-Oct [October]” trader concepts on withdrawals and injections are no longer totally valid, especially after the mixed-up signals we got in late March and early April, the marketer continued. He no longer goes by the calendar on the traditional injection and withdrawal seasons, but instead “I say the seasons start and end when people start or stop injecting or withdrawing.”

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