Prices continued to fall at a slight majority of points Friday, but the Midcontinent joined nearly all of the West in rebounding. Most eastern markets bowed to generally moderate to cool weather and the previous day’s 12.7-cent decline by the new prompt-month November futures contract. A cool Midwest was due to start warming up again over the weekend, which helped explain the Midcontinent gains, but market-area quotes were softer.

The western price strength, which featured spikes in the Rockies, was harder to fathom, as negative influences were growing instead of receding. One source could only speculate that with overnight lows reaching the 40s and low 50s in the Rockies and Pacific Northwest and snowfalls occurring in mountainous areas, enough heating load had developed to support regional pricing.

The usual weekend loss of industrial load was not in play as it normally is in Friday trading. With the transition to October occurring Monday, Friday deals were for Monday-only flow.

The overall softening measured losses from 2-3 cents to nearly 35 cents. The largest ones were shared about evenly by the Gulf Coast and Midwest/Northeast citygates. However, a few flat to slightly higher Gulf Coast points were included in the firmness elsewhere, with advances ranging from about a nickel to nearly $1.65. CIG and Cheyenne Hub, which had seen the previous day’s lowest quotes of a nickel, were involved in Friday’s biggest upticks.

The big Rockies rally seemed to defy logic. Existing bearish factors were still in place: the outage of nearly half of Cheyenne Plains capacity; maintenance constraints on northbound Northwest volumes; and requirements by a couple of regional pipelines that interruptible storage be eliminated or reduced. Those were being supplemented by a PG&E high-inventory OFO for Saturday; the coming week’s Monday through Friday outage of Jackson Prairie storage on the Northwest system; and Questar’s announcement that it was reducing Clay Basin storage injection capacity starting Saturday (see Transportation Notes).

A western trader said his company observed the region’s overall price strength but was at a loss to understand why. It seemed to be a case of defying negative fundamental influences. It was a pretty quiet day with bidweek finished, he said; “we’re just trying to manage our first-of-month loads.” He estimated that the PG&E citygate index would be around the mid $6.10s.

Lorenzo made landfall on the east-central Mexican coast early Friday as a small hurricane but subsequently got downgraded to a tropical depression and was expected to have largely dissipated Friday night. Tropical Storm Karen was weakening Friday but becoming a little more of interest to the gas market as the National Hurricane Center’s projected tracking of the storm, previously having been pointed toward Bermuda, indicated a slightly more westerly turn around Tuesday that might take it toward the southern half of the East Coast. If that happens, it would result in demand destruction toward the end of this week with the storm’s rains dampening power generation load.

Tropical Depression 14 formed southwest of the Cape Verde Islands off West Africa and had a chance of becoming minimal Tropical Storm Melissa by Friday evening, The Weather Channel said.

The number of drilling rigs actively seeking natural gas in the U.S. took another sizeable hit in the week ending Sept. 28, falling by 15 following a 25-rig decline in the previous week, according to the Baker Hughes Rotary Rig Count (https://intelligencepress.com/features/bakerhughes/). Ten rigs in the Gulf of Mexico quit the search last week while the onshore tally fell by five. The still-active total was down 3% from a month earlier and unchanged from the previous year, Baker Hughes said.

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