Weekend prices bowed under the weight of the umpteenth huge weekly storage injection report and generally mild weather in the key Midwest and Northeast market areas. Despite reports of air conditioning load starting to pick up to near-normal summer levels in the South and Midcontinent, quotes declined between a nickel and 20 cents at most points, with much bigger plunges seen in California.

A mildly stronger screen during much of the morning failed to avert cash softness, but its eventual push higher helped to lift tag-along late cash numbers, a Midcontinent trader said. He and others in intrastate Texas and Gulf Coast markets said electric utilities were upping their gas orders due to regional temperatures expected to hit the 90s and 100s over the weekend.

Even intra-Alberta numbers, which normally might have been expected to rise because of their screen-tracking tendency, fell victim to weak demand and dropped a little more than C10 cents, a couple of marketers said.

Widespread thunderstorms were cooling off several parts of the West Friday, but Rockies/San Juan points had some of the day’s smallest price declines. On the other hand, a PG&E high-linepack OFO was largely responsible for California numbers falling by about 80 cents (border-SoCalGas) or in triple digits (Malin and PG&E citygate). The citygate weakness might have been even greater, said one source, except that many traders “like me could see the OFO coming from checking the linepack figures on Pipe Ranger,” PG&E’s Internet bulletin board.

SoCalGas (which did not issue an OFO) has begun the process of withdrawing 2.7 Bcf of working gas from its non-operational East Montebello storage field and is using it to supply core customers, a spokeswoman said. When the working gas has been depleted, the nation’s largest LDC will sell the remaining 10 Bcf of base gas into the open market; that is expected to begin sometime next month.

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