Losses moderately outnumbered gains in Friday’s cash market as growth of heating load in the South was offset by still-substantial but eroding weather-based demand in the Northeast, Midwest/Midcontinent and Rockies.

Thursday’s 19.7-cent rebound by April futures, along with colder weather in the South, was credited for points that were flat to about 15 cents higher and were concentrated in the Gulf Coast. Losses ranged from 2-3 cents to about 30 cents, with most of the largest ones in the Northeast.

Monday’s cash market will have modestly negative futures guidance after the April contract dropped 1.3 cents Friday (see related story).

Although a cold front had securely settled into all of the South by Friday, its addition of heating load to the overall market was only marginal as no locations were expected to get colder than about 40 degrees over the weekend.

Although lows around freezing were still in the Saturday forecast for parts of the Midwest and Northeast, most of the East is expected to be experiencing seasonal norms early this week.

Some lows in the 20s were still due during the weekend in the Rockies and Western Canada, but cool to mild conditions were predicted for most of the West.

After projecting single-digit system weighted average temperatures earlier in the week, Northern Natural Gas said Friday they should be rising into the mid 40s by Monday.

No major pipeline constraints were in effect as of Friday.

A utility buyer in the Lower Midwest said his company had gone from near-record throughput around Tuesday of last week to below-normal gas volumes for the weekend. It’s “much warmer” now — that is, about normal for mid-March with lows around freezing instead of in the teens — he said Friday, and temperatures were expected to be above normal by early this week.

The decline in the number of drilling rigs searching for gas in the U.S. slowed a bit during the week ending March 13 as only 32 were deactivated in that period, according to the Baker Hughes Rotary Rig Count (https://intelligencepress.com/features/bakerhughes). That took the total count to 884, with four rigs departing the hunt in the Gulf of Mexico and 28 being laid down onshore, Baker Hughes said. Its latest tally is down 16% from a month ago and 39% from the year-earlier level.

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