Much like last month’s swing market ended on Oct. 28, triple-digit price losses were the order of the day at all points Friday. Moderating weekend weather trends in the South, Midwest, Northeast and parts of the West, along with the previous day’s plunges in energy futures and the bearish psychology of record storage inventories, were chiefly responsible for the tremendous softening.

As usual, the decline of industrial load over a weekend was another, albeit relatively minor, factor in the market’s slide.

Big rebounds are expected Monday, although they’re not likely to recapture all of the price ground lost Friday. New cold fronts are forecast for early this week in the Northeast, South and Midwest, and the National Weather Service projects below normal temperatures in most of the East throughout the week.

Although oil-based futures offerings at Nymex realized recoveries Friday, with crude settling back above $49/bbl, the natural gas screen extended its decline by about another quarter.

Friday’s huge declines made for “an interesting day,” a Northeast marketer commented. There was steady erosion of prices throughout the trading session, he said. He expects to see rebounds Monday in both cash and screen prices, saying many of the “short-term oscillators” in the futures market indicate oversold positions. He noted that an infusion of arctic air is due in the Northeast early this week, “so I expect to see fairly strong prices through Wednesday but then tailing off Thursday into the weekend.”

Weak Rockies pricing occurred despite the unusual event of Kern River reporting low linepack in all four segments. However, a high-linepack OFO by SoCalGas put downward pressure on western numbers in general.

At first glance, news of a freighter hitting the unmanned High Island 207 gas production platform off Galveston, TX (see related story) might have seemed like another supply woe added to the existing Hurricane Ivan-related offshore shut-ins. However, owner EOG Resources said the platform’s well was low-producing and had already been shut in for about a month.

A minuscule reduction from the day before of 0.72 MMcf/d in Gulf of Mexico outages to 742.16 MMcf/d was reported by Minerals Management Service. Its cumulative total of deferred production since Sept. 11 reached 113.243 Bcf Friday, or 2.545% of annual Gulf output. The week ended with an additional 456.92 MMcf/d having been recovered since the previous Friday.

Citigroup analyst Kyle Cooper’s initial estimation for the upcoming storage report calls for a build “somewhere near 20 Bcf.” However, he cautioned, the volume is subject to major revision either higher or lower.

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