With milder weather arriving a bit earlier than expected in the South and lows in the lower Northeast not getting much below freezing Friday, cash traders largely ignored the previous day’s advance of 7.6 cents by March futures in sending all but a few locations to generally moderate losses Thursday.

A small uptick of about a nickel by intrastate OGT was a bit puzzling to one producer, since expected lows Thursday and Friday in the Sooner State were either around freezing or several degrees. That’s not all that cold for mid-February, he said. OGT was joined by a few flat western points in maintaining relative strength amid overall declines.

Disregarding an out-of-the-zone drop of nearly 55 cents by the Florida citygate (where an extended Overage Alert Day remained in effect on Florida Gas Transmission through at least Thursday), most of the losses were in single digits as they ranged from a little less than a nickel to about 20 cents. Mid-Atlantic and Northeast citygates tended to record most of the largest slides.

The Energy Information Administration hit the nail square on the head for many analysts in reporting a 190 Bcf storage withdrawal for the week ending Feb. 12. Consensus expectations had centered around that exact volume. Nymex traders obviously spent little time celebrating the accurate call, however; they were too busy sending prompt-month futures 21.4 cents lower to $5.172 (see related story).

The fall left the March contract trading at a distinct discount to a large majority of the cash market, with only points in the Rockies, Southwest basins and Western Canada failing to surpass the Nymex product by substantial amounts.

IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) indicated the recent dwindling of Northeast loads (or possibly a substitution of heavier pulls on storage) in reporting that volumes traded on its system for Texas Eastern M-3 had plunged from 396,500 MMBtu Wednesday to 266,500 MMBtu Thursday. It wasn’t just in the market area, though. ICE said trading activity for NGPL-TexOk took an even bigger dive from 941,000 MMBtu Wednesday to 748,000 MMBtu Thursday.

In a signal of a potential OFO, PG&E projected that linepack would rise above its maximum target level on Saturday. The flat PG&E citygate still was firmer than most of the market.

Other pipelines also indicated a gradual shift in the weather outlook, with MRT lifting a System Protection Warning and Tennessee replacing a previous cold-based Imbalance Warning for two market-area zones with a systemwide one aimed at averting excess linepack (see Transportation Notes).

The South is in a slow warming trend, with most locations reaching the 50s and even 60s in some instances. The Northeast continues to see little change from merely cold except in the more northerly reaches. Other than moderately cooling thermometer levels in coastal California, the West also is experiencing status quo weather, with substantial cold only in the Rockies and Western Canada.

With Friday lows predicted to be in the teens and low 20s, the Midwest seemed to be a good candidate for being a firmer market, but it took its price lumps like most other areas.

A Midcontinent producer said capacity constraints and people making up negative imbalances were the most likely sources for OGT’s minor gain, because he could discern relatively little heating load. He noted that Midcontinent numbers were trading more than a nickel over prompt-month futures; he wasn’t sure why, saying the Nymex product is usually at least 20 cents higher. He said he is gradually shifting from bear to bull because the market just isn’t acting logically in his view.

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