With winter displaying a surprisingly tenacious grip on Canadian and northern U.S. weather into the weekend, the market proved to be firmer Friday than many had expected. Once again flatness was the dominant price theme as most points were about a nickel or less up or down from unchanged.

The major exceptions on the upside were Dominion and Northeast citygate gains of up to a quarter, while in the other direction San Juan-Blanco quotes plunged by nearly two dollars.

The San Juan Basin made its third major price reversal in as many days Friday because a lot of basin production that had been shut in for the previous couple of days was getting turned on again for Saturday flow, a marketer said, estimating that as much as half a Bcf/d returned to the market. The typical weekend dropoff in industrial demand also played a part, she said.

“I’m surprised by how much winter we’re still getting in the first week of April,” commented a Midwest utility buyer who was expecting snow in her service territory Saturday. Regional temperatures near freezing were predicted to dip as far south as Kansas and Missouri over the weekend. Warmer weather isn’t due until the latter half of this week, the buyer said, so prices should be flat to firmer at least through Tuesday.

Over in the Northeast, another utility buyer was thinking along similar lines. “This winter just doesn’t seem to want to let go!” he exclaimed. Area citygates were getting close to a dollar above Gulf Coast levels in some weekend deals, he noted. Such spreads more than covered transport variables, creating selling opportunities at the citygate and and buying opportunities in the production area, the buyer added. “We weren’t seeing the standard weekend discount we usually get from lower industrial load.” He expects the Appalachian market to tighten a bit this week, observing that on Tuesday Columbia Gas will start restricting secondary deliveries at Leach, KY, its interconnect with upstream affiliate Columbia Gulf.

“It was fun” in comparison to earlier in the week when there was almost no volatility, a Northeast trader said in reference to dealing with the Friday-Saturday outage of Maritimes & Northeast deliveries into Tennessee at Dracut, MA. He reported a 40-cent range of Dracut prices Friday. Many people were breaking up deals among Saturday-only and Sunday/Monday-only, and there was also trading for Sunday-only and Monday-only, “almost every permutation possible,” the trader said. It depended on who you were selling to whether Saturday-only supply was at a premium or discount, he added. Earlier in the week the weather trend seemed to be toward moderation, “but it’s seemed more like winter in the Northeast the closer the weekend got,” he said.

Pacific Northwest points joined most of the Rockies pipes in moderate weakness. However, sources are anticipating a substantial Rockies rebound Monday when about 860 MMcf/d of Transwestern San Juan Lateral capacity opens up again for Tuesday flows.

The “boring” California market was flat to a few cents off, a western trader said. She found a “good play” in moving gas from Malin to Kern River Station to take it into SoCalGas because of the price spread of about a quarter between the two points. The consensus is that non-Rockies points in the West will be fairly soft this week because there will no longer be a Transwestern outage constricting Rockies supplies, the trader added.

“A meteorologist cannot help but marvel at a temperature gradient that is currently bringing a reading of 70 to Pittsburgh, and [the] middle 20s to Buffalo (a distance of only 180 miles!),” New York City-based Weather 2000 said in its Friday advisory. “While the southeastern quadrant of the U.S. enjoys a pleasant day in the 70s, winter storm warnings currently span nine northern tier states, from Minnesota to Massachusetts. The Great Lakes states will see accumulating snowfall, sleet and freezing rain, as upstate New York and New England contend with more significant ice accumulations.

“As mentioned in our last discussion, much of the nation will experience well below normal temperatures [this] week. Overnight readings in the 20s will be common across the Central and Upper Plains, the Ohio Valley and the Northeast. Cold air will also filter southward, with overnight temperatures in the 30s and 40s likely across the deep South.

“The seesaw pattern continues into the six-10-day period, as the Plains bounce above normal, only to fall back below normal in the 11-18-day period. The Northeast will be more stubborn to warm up, and will not likely see a string of above normal days until at least mid-month. Meanwhile, the Pacific-moderated West rides a slower seesaw, and will see temperatures move more gradually from above normal to below normal territory, and eventually back again.”

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