Despite forecasts of frigid weather remaining in the Rockies and temperatures continuing to descend Friday in the Midwest, Northeast and South, the cash market’s upward momentum of the first three days in the week was arrested to some extent Thursday. Price direction was mixed but biased slightly to the downside amid quotes that mostly were less than a dime up or down from unchanged.

With high temperatures in the South beginning to retreat from the 70s that dominated earlier in the week, the Gulf Coast tended to see the most firmness in a market that ranged from flat to about 15 cents higher or a little more than 20 cents lower. Even with a Tulsa low around freezing Friday, the largest losses were recorded in the Midcontinent.

There is a fairly good chance of cash prices resuming their climb Friday. Cold fronts will have arrived in the South and Northeast before the day is out, and another major cold snap is due to occupy the East early next week. Also, prior-day screen support continued to grow as February futures tacked on a 16-cent gain Thursday due to both a bullish storage pull report and hints of more rate cuts by the Federal Reserve (see futures story). The weekend decline of industrial load will be a negative factor Friday, of course.

One reason for the market’s ambivalence on price direction Thursday may lie in the fact that in some instances in the East, highs will be getting higher and lows will be getting lower Friday. As examples in the Northeast, Albany, NY, will go from a 46-33 range Thursday to an expected high of 50 and low of 29 Friday, while Boston’s Thursday high of 50 and low of 40 was predicted to extend to a 58-36 range Friday by Madison, WI-based Weather Central.

The Energy Information Administration was above consensus prior expectations in the low 160s Bcf when it reported a 171 Bcf storage withdrawal for the week ending Jan. 4. That contributed to the futures bullishness as the volume greatly exceeded the comparable year-ago and five-year average numbers.

A utility buyer in the Lower Midwest said his area got a dusting of snow Thursday afternoon “but it melted as soon as it hit the ground.” He acknowledged the return of significantly colder weather early next week but said it would not be considered severe because regional lows are not expected to get into single digits. “This has not been a rough winter at all,” he added; it’s much like last year but a little cooler.

The buyer said that in spite of the big storage draw in the previous week, there is still more than adequate gas stashed away to meet virtually any industry needs. He noted that some storage services have mandatory withdrawal ratchets, so the patches of relative warmth that have occurred so far in the heating season are not helpful to those required to reduce their accounts on a specified timeline.

A Southern utility buyer was thinking along the same lines. His company was fortunate to get the very cold temperatures that arrived just after New Year’s Day, he said, because that allowed the utility to put a serious dent in its storage volumes.

It looks like more rain than snow in Friday’s forecast for the Upper Midwest, according to a marketer in the region. It was “balmy-type weather” over the last weekend, she said. It’s gotten colder since then but not nearly as cold as it will be early next week, she added. Her company is trying to hold off buying spot gas until the prices come down a bit and is supplying clients out of storage in the meantime.

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