The variability of this winter’s weather patterns showed up in market reactions again Wednesday. Losses and gains were close to being evenly divided and mostly small, but they included several spikes in the Northeast. Flat numbers were frequent, especially in the Louisiana production area.

A slight majority of locations were flat to about $1.25 higher, but only Transco’s Zone 6-New York pool recorded a triple-digit increase. Losses in the rest of the market ranged from 2-3 cents to a little more than a dime, with most of them occurring in the West.

Cash traders will have slightly negative screen guidance Thursday after February futures wound up with a loss of merely 1.6 cents (see related story).

Three new pipeline restrictions were being added while one had been eliminated (see Transportation Notes).

A Midwest utility buyer noted that Northern Natural’s System Overrun Limitation (SOL) was both the first one of this winter and it had arrived later in the season than usual. He considered it a close call on whether the pipeline would leave the SOL in place through Friday. (Late Wednesday afternoon Northern did email a notice saying the SOL would be in effect again Friday.)

His area is experiencing frigid lows overnight, but it’s not too unpleasant during the day, the buyer said. The utility is meeting its scheduled budget for gas throughput currently, he added, but it was so moderate earlier in January that the company is running about 20% below demand expectations for the month.

A Midcontinent producer said he knew Oklahoma Gas & Electric is not burning its usual loads after talking with the fuel buyer recently. He said it will be interesting to see if some dry gas production gets shut in at currently low prices because he just couldn’t see how producers justified selling into this market unless associated liquids are involved or they absolutely have to have the cash flow. “But we shall see!” he said.

Saying local conditions had turned cold again, a marketer in the Upper Midwest added that a lot of bouncing around between mild and cold periods with short transitions in between tended to make doing business more complicated. Her company is trying to use storage gas for client needs as much as possible but is reserving a decision on whether to pick up any February baseload.

While Texas Eastern M-3 pricing rose only about a nickel, its volumes exchanging hands on the IntercontinentalExchange platform soared from 324,000 MMBtu Tuesday to 519,000 MMBtu Wednesday.

Estimates of the storage withdrawal to be reported Thursday for the week ending Jan. 13 are fairly wide-ranging again. Tim Evans of Citi Futures Perspective is near the middle for a change with an expectation of 86 Bcf. Credit Suisse’s Stefan Revielle and Jan Stuart look for a build of 100 Bcf. Stephen Smith of Stephen Smith Energy Associates and IAF Advisors analyst Kyle Cooper made similar estimates of 80 Bcf and 81 Bcf, respectively.

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