Thursday’s cash market largely resembled the one a day earlier, with mild softness dominating in the East outside the Midcontinent and the West and Midcontinent continuing to see mostly strong increases. The primary differences were that virtually all western points advanced Thursday, and there were several flat to slightly higher locations in the Gulf Coast and at Midwest and Northeast citygates.

The market was still encountering light weather-based load in several areas, but heating load is gradually starting to build in the Midwest and Northeast, where highs in the 50s will be common Friday. Wednesday’s 13.5-cent decline by November futures may have kept some eastern points from entering positive territory Thursday.

Losses were mostly in single digits, with only the Florida citygate’s drop of nearly a quarter exceeding a decline range of 2-3 cents to a little more than a dime. There were quite a few instances of flat prices, while gains ran as high as about $1.25 in El Paso’s San Juan-Blanco pool.

The Energy Information Administration was slightly below consensus expectations in the low 80s Bcf when it reported a 79 Bcf addition to storage during the week ending Oct. 10. Although Citi Futures Perspective analyst Tim Evans correctly noted that the report was “basically just confirming that the supply/demand balance remains somewhat bearish, as the five-year average [injection] was 63 Bcf,” Nymex traders took a more bullish view in sending the November natural gas futures contract 11.1 cents higher on the day (see related story). That was in the face of further deterioration in petroleum product futures numbers.

The reduction of hurricane-related production outages in the Gulf of Mexico is still going slowly. Minerals Management Service (MMS) said 62 companies (the number of reporting companies has been at that level for some time now) reported 2,705 MMcf/d of remaining gas shut-ins Thursday, down only 35 MMcf/d from Tuesday. And the tally of oil outages actually increased by 5,776 b/d from Tuesday’s level to 511,977 b/d, MMS said. The number of evacuated platforms fell by four to 77.

The remnants of Tropical Depression Sixteen were dissipating in Honduras as they approached the Guatemalan border. Hurricane Omar had cleared the northern Leeward Islands and strengthened to a major Category Three storm. It was expected to weaken while remaining on a northeastward track toward Europe.

The ongoing loss of 410 MMcf/d of injection capacity at SoCalGas’ Aliso Canyon storage facility (see Transportation Notes) does not seem to be hurting Southern California border, SoCal citygate and Southern border-PG&E prices. All three points were up strongly again Thursday as forecasts of low to mid 80s highs Friday in coastal cities Los Angeles and San Diego contributed some cooling load.

Sumas was the sole declining western point with a loss of about a dime as Westcoast began to recover from low linepack levels after restoring full operations at Pine River Gas Plant (see Transportation Notes).

An eastward-moving cold front is wiping out nearly all of any remaining air conditioning load in the South, where few locations are forecast to get above the 70s Friday.

A Texas-based marketer noted that although the screen was up, cash “felt weak” near the end of trading, so he looks for mildly softer prices again Friday in most eastern markets. Thursdays are kind of “weird” for cash trading, as almost everybody finishes making deals by 9:30 CDT, he said. Nobody wants to be in a position where an adverse storage report could hurt them later in the morning.

Midwestern Gas Transmission took a pipe section out of service Oct. 7-17, the marketer said, but the end of that outage Friday may help boost weekend prices in Chicago.

He suggested that Midcontinent numbers may be seeing big gains while Midwest market-area prices are flat because more gas is being kept at home in the Midcontinent or maybe being sent west to the Rockies or south to the Waha area where prices are also strong.

A marketer in the Upper Midwest said her area had a light frost “possible” Thursday night with lows in the 30s, and it’s almost certain that frosts will be experienced over the weekend. She said her company was having some credit issues with a former supplier merely because it had some concern about the viability of the marketer’s bank, but had managed to line up another supplier.

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