Price movement was close to evenly mixed in Thursday’s trading of month-ending supply, but it appeared that losses slightly outnumbered gains. Despite warming trends, there was still a bit of heating load for Friday in parts of the Northeast, Midwest, eastern South and Pacific Northwest, and cash quotes had extra support from November’s expiration-day gain of 28.3 cents Wednesday.

On the other hand, other areas are starting to experience pleasant fall conditions as warmer weather continues to move eastward. Its arrival in much of the East this weekend will make the recent early blast of winter just a memory.

A slight majority of points were flat to down nearly 60 cents, with the biggest declines occurring in the Northeast. Gains ranged from 2-3 cents to about 30 cents, and they tended to cluster mostly in the Gulf Coast.

The Energy Information Administration reported a 46 Bcf addition to storage during the week ending Oct. 24, which handily exceeded prior expectations centered around 40 Bcf. With the end of injection season just around the corner and many storage facilities already topping off, Nymex traders appropriately took the report as a bearish signal and sent the December futures contract 34.7 cents lower in its prompt-month debut (see related story).

Tim Evans of Citi Futures Perspective commented that the injection volume “was in the upper part of the range of expectations and slightly above the 42 Bcf five-year average. This may also imply somewhat higher injections for the next two weeks to the extent that it may represent a somewhat higher level of wellhead supply.”

The combination of moderating weather and the big screen loss is virtually certain to unite all points in softness Friday, one source said.

Although the situation is likely to be easing soon, Texas Eastern reported Thursday that it is experiencing large due-pipe imbalances on its system, almost certainly due to the recent blast of cold in the Northeast. Texas Eastern warned that it may be required to force balance short TABS-1 pools and schedule underperforming receipt point operators to nominated volumes.

The opposite situation was surfacing in a couple of instances in the West. El Paso said Thursday it had set the probability of declaring a Strained Operating Condition or Critical Operating Condition to high due to high linepack, and Westcoast said its system linepack was high.

It got down to freezing Wednesday morning in parts of northern Florida but temperatures were rising Thursday, said a utility buyer in the state. He reported a slow bidweek, primarily because many Florida Gas Transmission (FGT) shippers were in long supply positions from late October after cold weather was less than expected. He said he bought a small amount of FGT Zone 1 baseload at basis of minus 33 cents “because it was so cheap.” He said he’s looking forward to getting into a new month so the utility can work off excess supply.

A Midwestern utility buyer said all his bidweek deals were done at the demarcation point of Northern Natural Gas for index flat to minus a penny. His utility has a fairly light load at the start of heating season, but it will approximately double from December through February, he said. The company might need to sell gas in early November while it’s forecast to be fairly warm, he added.

A western trader declined to say November supplies were plentiful but did concede there was “enough to go around.” He estimated the PG&E citygate index at $6.01. The West is currently looking at a little bit of brief cold, he said, but it should be fairly warm for the first half of November.

A Rockies producer, noting that Questar had announced it was shutting down all gas-directed drilling in the Rockies except in the Pinedale area (see related story), commented that his company was a little more than two-thirds hedged at prices over $7, “and as a low-cost producer we’ll be fine. Still, we are not hedged forever, and Questar thinks it’s going to be a couple of tough summers on the basis. We really need that RAP [Rockies Alliance Pipeline] line they want to build to Chicago. One thing is for sure: drilling and service costs will be dropping.”

The amount of hurricane-related gas shut-ins in the Gulf of Mexico barely budged since Tuesday. Minerals Management Service (MMS) said 61 companies (down one from the level that has prevailed in recent weeks) reported 2,439 MMcf/d still off-line Thursday — a reduction of merely 37 MMcf/d from two days earlier. Oil production outages fell by 2,163 b/d to 359,750 b/d, MMS said, while the count of evacuated platforms was unchanged at 71.

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