Prices continued to fall at nearly all points Friday due to generally mild weather forecasts and the previous day’s 9.4-cent decline by May futures. The typical weekend decline of industrial load was an additional bearish factor.

Although a majority of Friday’s drops were again fairly small in single digits, a significant number of them (mostly in the West and Midcontinent) climbed to more than a dime.

A few points deviated from the norm by being flat to a couple of pennies higher. The rest of the cash market recorded losses ranging from 2 cents to about a quarter.

Despite casting Thursday morning’s storage injection report in a negative light that day, Nymex traders had more bullish attitudes Friday and gave Monday’s cash market some positive guidance by pushing the May futures contract 13 cents higher Friday (see related story).

After getting as high as about 70 degrees as recently as Wednesday, Denver could expect several feet of “heavy, wet snow” in its area over the weekend, according to The Weather Channel. But forecasts of freezing lows or less weren’t enough to support prices in the Rockies, which tended to see most of Friday’s biggest drops.

And weak cold fronts moving southward out of Canada into the Great Lakes and Northeast regions during the weekend were not expected to drag regional temperatures anywhere below seasonal levels for early spring. Meanwhile, Saturday forecasts of highs from the upper 60s to mid to high 70s in the Midcontinent and South equated to virtually nothing in either heating or cooling load.

Noting recent customer banking on its system and warmer temperatures predicted in its market area for the weekend, Northwest asked customers to keep nominations closely in balance to avoid an entitlement for underruns north of the Kemmerer (WY) Compressor Station.

El Paso also was reporting a moderate high-linepack condition Friday.

A marketer noted that it was “a little cooler than normal” in the Northeast late last week but said that’s not a big deal in late April. Transportation was smooth in all respects, he said, and because of the lack of severe cold in intermediate-term forecasts, he thinks it will be difficult for the cash market to return to rising prices for quite a while.

Southwest temperatures were unusually cool in the first half of last week in topping out at no more than about 70 or so, said a utility buyer in the region, but they’re expected to start hitting the 90s again during the coming week, which should get some air conditioning demand going again. He didn’t turn on the heater, the buyer said, but found it necessary to wear a jacket early in the week.

He said the gas market is “about as quiet as it’s been in years,” with plentiful supply, cheap prices and no transport problems.

A Midcontinent producer said his area could start to see some air conditioning load for gas when it heats ups into the low to mid 80s this week, but he still expects cash prices to continue drifting a bit lower for the remainder of the month. Of course, that’s “easy to say when prices are below $3,” he added.

The number of drilling rigs seeking gas in the U.S. took another big drop of 30 to 760 during the week ending April 17, which is the lowest level in more than six years (see related story), according to the Baker Hughes Rotary Rig Count (https://intelligencepress.com/features/bakerhughes/). Nearly all of the decline (29 rigs) occurred onshore, while only one rig quit the search in the Gulf of Mexico, Baker Hughes said. Its latest tally is down 11% from a month ago and 48% less than the year-ago level.

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