Triple-digit losses were common in the Midcontinent and West, while CenterPoint-East traded as low as 20 cents and averaged less than a dollar, as all points took a dive Friday. Prices were dragged lower by moderate mid-fall weather either in place or approaching in many areas, the previous day’s plunge of 34.7 cents by December futures and the drop of industrial load associated with a weekend.

Declines ranged from about 30 cents to a little more than $2.35.

The bearish market mood was compounded by few storage injection options remaining available on the eve of the traditional end of the injection season. However, some analysts expect that additions to storage will continue for at least a week or two into November, especially with generally mild weather forecast for the first half of the month.

Monday’s cash market will have substantial prior-trading day futures support after the December contract rallied by 35.2 cents Friday (see related story).

Bulls may find some hope in the National Weather Service’s (NWS) six- to 10-day forecast posted Thursday. During the Nov. 5-9 period NWS expects below-normal temperatures from the Pacific Northwest eastward through the western half of the Midwest and southeastward through the Rockies and Midcontinent into nearly all of the South. But the key Northeast market area is forecast to experience above-normal readings.

Excess supply issues continued on a couple of pipes in the West. El Paso continued to say its probability of declaring a Strained Operating Condition was high due to system linepack being above 7,700 MMcf “with receipts from our supply basins in excess of scheduled deliveries.” And Westcoast was still reporting high system linepack.

In addition, SoCalGas waited until Friday afternoon to issue a high-linepack OFO for Saturday.

Although the overall short-term weather outlook is moderate, The Weather Channel (TWC) said a cold front with strong winds would sweep into the West over the weekend, followed by another cold front Monday. The Midwest could also expect a couple of couple of cold fronts, but they will be rather weak, TWC said, and weekend temperatures in the region would be five to 20 degrees above average.

Highs in the 70s had already returned to the western end of the South earlier in the week, and the eastern half was due to start seeing similar conditions during the weekend. Northeast citygate recorded big drops Friday despite a dry cold front sweeping southward through the region on Saturday and much of New England forecast to experience near-freezing lows that day.

It’s “very mild here,” said a Midcontinent producer, and pipes out of the region are really backing up with supplies. He said his company is considering shutting in some daily interruptible production that feeds into CenterPoint-East and Panhandle Eastern, which traded as low as 70 cents Friday.

The producer added that he thinks shut-ins that have been announced over the past month or so are having an impact “because ICE [IntercontinentalExchange] bids on Nov. 1-30 swing swaps really jumped up the last hour or so” from about $2.90 to $3.20 for gas into Panhandle Eastern. The big issue is still takeaway capacity in the Midcontinent region, he said. This will remain a problem until Midcontinent Express Pipeline is on-line, he said, which he hopes will occur by April 1 (see Daily GPI, June 2).

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