Generally moderate softness dominated the weekend market. With pockets of modest gains tucked in here and there, a large majority of points ranged from flat to down about 15 cents Friday, although most of the losses were confined to single digits. However, San Juan Basin numbers stood out with a plunge of about 35 cents.

A couple of sources were a bit puzzled about the declines closing out a week of mostly flat to rising prices. They noted that the screen was rebounding by more than a dime in what some considered a delayed reaction to the large withdrawal volume in EIA’s storage report Thursday morning. More important, though, was weekend weather expected to be colder than it was during the week in most regions outside the West, the sources said. Cold fronts were moving into or through the Midwest, Northeast and South and predicted to bring snowy conditions across the northern tier of states.

“‘California weekenditis’ is what we call it” for western prices tending to see most of Friday’s larger drops, said a marketer referring to the usual pattern of demand falling over a weekend independently of other market factors. “It was really hard to find markets today,” he said, adding that he thought cash should have been up because of Nymex strength. Southern California Gas “was rattling some cages” about a potential OFO for Saturday, and that helped depress border and San Juan quotes, even though no OFO was issued, the marketer said. No one worried about a PG&E OFO because linepack was good on that system, he commented.

A South Texas producer reported seeing higher prices in late deals, but he thinks “the screen’s going to tank on Monday” and probably take cash with it, due to warmer weather returning in much of the nation. Even though temperatures would be “pretty cool” in Texas for the weekend, a South Texas utility asked his company to shut in a small processing plant for about seven hours overnight Friday because the utility had contracted for more gas than it could use, the producer said. He observed that he has been seeing a swing back to more daily fixed prices this month in lieu of indexing.

A dismayed Northeast trader said, “I thought market-area prices would be a little weaker. After the bearish reaction to storage Thursday, I figured weekend gas would be even weaker. I guess a quick cold burst expected on Saturday kept prices up. But the six- to 10-day outlook shows above normal temps for the Northeast and Midwest. If we don’t see some serious weather action coming on soon, this market is going to be all fundamentals driven. Cash will be all supply/demand…and there is plenty of gas in the ground to supply.”

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