Battered by negative influences seeming to come from all directions — mostly mild to chilly (but not particularly cold) weather, weak prior-day futures, storage injection capacity growing ever tighter and any tropical storm threat to Gulf of Mexico production deemed unlikely for the rest of the season — the cash market fell at nearly all points Thursday.

Gradually recovering Line 300 prices in Tennessee’s Zone 4 as additional Marcellus Shale takeaway capacity gets nearer were the sole exception to drops everywhere else ranging from a little less than a nickel to a little more than a quarter.

The Energy Information Administration’s report of a 111 Bcf addition to storage during the week ending Sept. 23 was about 10 Bcf higher than consensus expectations in the low 100s Bcf. Naturally, Nymex traders saw the volume as a bearish signal, but after pushing November futures 8 cents below Wednesday’s settlement shortly after the report, they gradually trimmed some of the losses and wound up with a 5.2 cents decline to a $3.747 close (see related story).

The Atlantic tropical scene was essentially unchanged, with northward-moving Tropical Storm Ophelia keeping Bermuda in its sights. Although Tropical Storm Philippe previously appeared to have a small chance of heading toward the eastern Gulf of Mexico, its movement to the northwest indicated a landfall along the southern East Coast — assuming Philippe survives the remaining great distance to get there.

Although peak temperatures in the 90s and 100s will continue a bit longer from Texas through the desert Southwest, Oklahoma and Louisiana were already seeing cooling trends under way, and much of Texas was due for milder conditions starting this weekend. Except for Florida, the eastern South had already cooled quite a bit, with Atlanta expected to peak in the mid to upper 80s Friday. The Northeast was enjoying seasonable early fall weather, while much of the Midwest was chilling to lows in the 40s, although one source didn’t think many people were turning on their furnaces yet. Inland California’s peak temperatures, while still warm, also were in retreat.

The National Weather Service expects above-normal temperatures during the Oct. 4-8 period in a broad swath of the central and eastern U.S. with its western border-to-border edge running along the eastern Rockies and the eastern edge almost reaching the Atlantic Seaboard. Of course, that’s a somewhat bearish forecast for this time of year, when above-normal readings tend to indicate moderate conditions rather than any significant boost of heating load.

Southern’s OFO to combat excess linepack (see Transportation Notes) and an outage of Northwest’s Kemmerer Compressor Station expected to last through Friday were the only significant pipeline constraints in place Thursday. However, three Spectra Energy pipes — Texas Eastern, Algonquin and East Tennessee — were encouraging shippers to run negative imbalances during the Saturday through Monday period.

With new takeaway capacity imminent and a new storage facility near the Cheyenne Hub due to begin operations within a couple of months, a Rockies producer anticipates the CIG-Henry Hub spread (about 23 cents as of Thursday) narrowing soon and the two points eventually priced at parity on a consistent basis.

FERC gave Kern River the go-ahead Monday to begin service on the pipeline’s Apex Expansion Project (see Daily GPI, Sept. 28), and Kern River said it will accept Apex nominations for Saturday’s gas day. The producer said Apex capacity is already contracted to Las Vegas-based NV Power, but presumably some would be available at times when NV Power doesn’t exercise its full Apex capacity rights.

“My guess is that since its [Apex] capacity is a modest 266 MMcf/d…it won’t have much impact on [Rockies] prices, though it could certainly contribute to a lowering of the [CIG-Henry Hub] differential,” the producer said. He noted that Bison is still running more than 100 MMcf/d below its design capacity, and its return to full operations together with the new Apex capacity will contribute to lowering the Henry-CIG differential.

Another potential benefit for Rockies pricing is in the works with the East Cheyenne Gas Storage project gearing up for service, especially since the producer estimates it will start buying about 300 MMcf/d for cushion and working gas. East Cheyenne spokesman Kevin Legg said the project got its final FERC OK in April and will begin filling cushion gas around the end of October in anticipation of a November startup of customer service.

A Midcontinent producer was glad to see Enogex postponing a Line 20 outage until Oct. 18-21 (see Transportation Notes) from its previously scheduled time early in the month. It will mean lower prices on Enogex while the work is under way, he said, but at least the delay puts off the day of reckoning until there will be little if any storage space left in the region. It makes the pain a little easier to bear in the meantime, especially since “storage has pretty much dried up on OGT.”

Other than being quite rainy, Northeast weather is very nice temperature-wise, a regional marketer said. His company had finished bidweek deals very early, but he thought index declines would largely mirror the futures settlement’s month-over-month loss of about a dime.

Bidweek activity predictably was diminishing quickly following Wednesday’s futures expiration. In the limited amount of trading still being done Thursday on the IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) platform, October baseload numbers continued to recede. El Paso’s San Juan-Blanco pool was nearly 9 cents lower than on Wednesday, ICE said, while the MichCon citygate recorded a smaller drop of nearly 6 cents.

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