While offshore production gradually returned toward normal Friday, traders began paying more attention to regenerated Tropical Storm Lili in the Caribbean Sea and noticing how its course eerily was resembling that of the now-defunct Isidore so far. Their concerns about potential new Gulf of Mexico outages in the coming week translated into price gains of about a nickel to a little more than 20 cents at all but a few scattered points that were flat to slightly lower.

The cash market got some support from a screen jump of just over 15 cents that was driven by the same jitters about Lili. Also, one source suggested that some people might have been thinking ahead to what is expected to be a fairly low storage injection report. Analyst Kyle Cooper of Salomon Smith Barney said his initial estimate of this week’s EIA report is for a build in the mid to upper 40s (Bcf) because of last week’s storm curtailments. He added that the following week’s volume is also likely to be low if Lili enters the Gulf this week and causes outages similar to Isidore’s.

Lili was moving “erratically” slowly northwestward about 125 miles southeast of Kingston, Jamaica at 5 p.m. EDT, the National Weather Service said. This motion was likely to bring the storm’s center near or over Jamaica sometime Friday night or Saturday.

As the pipelines had indicated Thursday, Friday was a day for getting up to speed on restoring offshore volumes. Transco said about 1 Bcf/d had been returned on its system, leaving it still 400 MMcf/d short of normal offshore flows. TGT’s supply loss had been cut by about 50 MMcf/d to 150 MMcf/d. An El Paso Corp. representative said all platforms had been manned again on its Tennessee, Sonat and ANR systems and production was returning throughout the day. Columbia Gulf had 200 MMcf/d of formerly shut-in gas restored by noon Friday, leaving it still about 350 MMcf/d short, but all flows should be back online sometime Saturday, a spokesman said.

Minerals Management Service said its Friday count of gas still shut in had dwindled to 6.399 Bcf/d, down from 8.475 Bcf/d the day before. The tallies of evacuated platforms and drilling rigs fell to 241 and 31 respectively.

A frustrated Florida utility buyer reporting citygates in the low to mid $4.50s said not only were “all these storms driving me crazy, but when is the last time Florida Gas [Transmission] hasn’t had an Overage Alert Day? Last winter?”

The Chicago market was really weak at the end, a producer said. “The bids just disappeared and a lot of sellers were left holding the bag.”

Calgary traders got a small taste of winter being not so far off with a bit of overnight snow. However, calling it “no big deal,” a producer said it snowed a little on the north side of town, “but it’s all gone now and sunny today with 18 degrees [Celsius, or about 65 Fahrenheit] temperatures.”

For all practical purposes, the Jackson Prairie storage facility on Northwest’s system is essentially full. As of Wednesday, the last gas day for which figures were posted Friday, Jackson Prairie inventory was 19,251,725 dekatherms, Northwest said. Facility capacity is 19,495,000 dekatherms.

The PG&E citygate and border prices into PG&E saw Friday’s largest drops of more than a nickel as the utility reinstated a high-linepack OFO for Saturday after having lifted a previous one only a day earlier.

A western trader noted about a 10-cent spread between Permian and Waha numbers, which he said “has been good for the last week. If prices are going to be above $3, the spread needs to be a dime. It is all relative; if gas was $4, it might not be worth the risk. But the spread might only be a nickel, and as long as the gas costs about a dollar that’s fine.”

The trader continued: “I sure would love to get my hands on some transport out of the Rockies. You could go anywhere with it right now and make a killing. The only real concern I would have is that Rockies [prices] haven’t been following any national trends. There is some strong and steady utility demand coming in. The weekend demand is not as great but more than I would have expected. Maybe since everyone is caught up in hurricane statistics, no one is bothering to check the temperatures.”

Bidweek activity, which had been delayed more than usual by last week’s storm disruptions, picked up immensely in Friday’s relative calm. A marketer commented that his October prices “were up, then down, then way up. Prices were just plain strong Friday. We stopped buying because everything was running up so far. Who expects this much strength on a Friday? We have a little business to take care of yet and we’re not sure if the storm [Lili] will materialize or not. I hope not because we would rather not enter into the month short.”

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