Price movement ranged from essentially none to nearly a dime higher for most points Thursday. Small declines at Northeast citygates and larger ones for the PG&E citygate and California border-SoCal gas were the exceptions in one direction, while upticks of 15-20 cents or so more for Malin and intra-Alberta broke the pattern in the other direction.

AGA finally failed to match or exceed prior expectations when it reported only 84 Bcf in storage injections for last week. A previously sedate screen spiked hugely upon hearing the news. “I guess the Nymex bulls were eager to pounce on any positive development they could find,” one cash trader said. “Do I think they went overboard in their response? I don’t know; I gave up trying to understand those guys a long time ago.”

Another source saw a moderate chance of futures going a bit higher today, but said the retreat of air conditioning load was likely to mean softer cash prices in eastern markets.

Cooler weather was arriving on schedule in the Northeast, a marketer said, but he was surprised that citygate declines were only minimal. He noted that temperatures were moderating also in the Midwest and parts of the Southeast, leaving only central Texas, inland California and the desert Southwest with serious heat remaining as of Wednesday.

The plunge at border-SoCalGas put in the unusual position of trading less than a dime above the PG&E citygate. A couple of marketers agreed that the citygate and Malin have some extra load because there’s more gas-fueled food processing activity going on in PG&E’s Northern California service territory than in the southern part of the state. In addition, the marketer said, border prices for delivery into SoCalGas were depressed somewhat while some people feared that the giant LDC was going to bar interruptible storage injections until further notice. However, a SoCalGas spokesman said that while interruptible injections were not allowed during last weekend’s Overnominations Day notices, no such restriction is in place at this time.

Bidweek is a slow starter, but that’s not unusual. One source said many traders would prefer to get closer to the futures contract’s expiration Friday before progressing beyond index or basis deals. However, a few western deals got done at fixed prices Wednesday. A large aggregator reported several border-SoCalGas trades in the mid $3.90s, while Kern River in the Rockies went from the mid $2.10s to the low $2.30s following the bullish Nymex reaction to AGA’s report, he said. A marketer quoted the PG&E citygate in the low to mid $3.70s, but said he heard numbers getting as low as $3.40 before rebounding to near $3.70, also related to the afternoon futures spike.

A Northeast source reported Transco Zone 6-NYC basis at plus 41-41.5 cents.

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