Prices were mixed but mostly moderately higher in the East Friday as a bit of “storm hype” and the previous day’s screen advance managed to trump slightly milder temperatures and the weekend decline in industrial load. Meanwhile western markets, which are essentially immune to tropical storm price impacts, fell at nearly all points except for flat showings by El Paso-Permian and intra-Alberta quotes and a Waha gain of about a quarter.

Nearly all eastern gains were in single digits, but Florida Gas Zone 3 ran to just over a dime. Several scattered points ranged from flat to down a little over a nickel, but a couple of Midcontinent pipes recorded dime-plus losses.

Waha’s gain of a quarter or so was highly conspicuous in the West, where other points were flat to down as much as nearly 35 cents. Waha quotes continued to benefit from strong air conditioning load in intrastate Texas and the Midcontinent, and that also helped explain El Paso-Permian flatness. But Transwestern-West Texas took the day’s biggest price hit after lifting an OFO that had cut deliveries to two Waha-area points (see Transportation Notes).

Western prices also felt negative pressure from the declaration of a high-linepack OFO for Saturday by SoCalGas and considerably below normal temperatures in several parts of the region.

Tropical Storm Arlene was the story of the day for the Gulf Coast and, to a lesser degree, the Northeast. Offshore evacuations in the eastern Gulf of Mexico (GOM) increased Friday and shut-ins mounted (see related story), but most traders continued to see Arlene as a relatively minor supply inconvenience. In keeping most of Friday’s upticks minimal, they also paid heed to cautions that the storm’s cooling rains were likely to quell about as much power generation load in the Southeast and eventually the Northeast as would be lost to shut-ins.

Another mitigating factor was that virtually all the producers shutting in gas expected to restore flows quickly, many as early as Sunday, after Arlene had passed through the eastern GOM.

Minerals Management Service (MMS) in New Orleans reported these statistics gleaned from reports by 11 companies as of 11:30 a.m. CDT Friday: 36 production platforms and 16 mobile drilling rigs evacuated; 353.92 MMcf/d of shut-in gas; and 25,474 bbl/d of shut-in oil. The evacuations equal 4.4% of 819 manned platforms and 11.4% of 140 drilling rigs currently operating in the Gulf, MMS said. The shut-ins represent 3.28% and 1.74% of the Gulf’s daily production of gas and oil respectively, it added.

Arlene got stronger and speeded up a bit Friday while “drenching” parts of Florida on its way to the U.S. Gulf Coast, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said. NHC updated its projection of the storm’s path to an early Saturday afternoon landfall around the western tip of Florida’s Panhandle. A tropical storm warning was extended Friday from Grand Isle, LA to Steinhatchee River in Florida, including New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain north of the city.

As of 5 p.m. EDT Arlene’s center was about 335 miles southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River and about 345 miles south-southeast of Pensacola, FL. It was moving just west of due north at nearly 17 mph, NHC said. A gradual turn to the north-northwest was expected, and it was possible that Arlene could become a minimal hurricane before landfall, the agency added. Maximum sustained winds had risen to about 65 mph Friday afternoon; 74 mph is the threshold wind speed for hurricane status.

A Gulf Coast producer reported losing “a little bit” of his supplies on Sonat and at Transco Station 65 to Arlene-related shut-ins Friday. However, he was “not seeing all that much anxiety” about the storm’s impact. “It caused a bit of hype early” in cash trading, he said, but most Gulf Coast prices were easing off later. Transco Station 65 stayed fairly strong throughout the session, falling only about a nickel from its high while other points were off as much as about 20 cents late, he said. He thought the Station 65 firmness was due to traders thinking it might be where most supply tightness from the storm would occur.

The producer said he could detect a dropoff in market-area air conditioning demand even though it was supposed to stay “pretty warm” in the New York City metro area through the weekend.

Naturally, a Midwestern utility buyer said Arlene wasn’t a big deal in his neighborhood. To traders in the region, “storm” meant a lot of recent thunderstorms, he said. The storms had reduced his system’s throughput significantly in the last couple of days after a very hot beginning of the week in which power generation load was still high.

Kyle Cooper said his initial estimation of the storage injection for the week ending June 10 is for a build in the mid 80s Bcf.

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