There was little consistency in price movement Tuesday. Most of the market was close to flat, but also saw gains as big as about 30 cents and losses as big as about 15 cents. Then there was the special case of the Northeast, where a couple of points recorded dollar-plus increases while others took the biggest falls of up to nearly 60 cents.

A majority of points were within a nickel or so up or down from flat, but they tended to be slightly biased toward the downside.

As predicted, a fast-moving “Alberta Clipper” had rushed through the Midwest, leaving colder temperatures in its wake, and was set to throw some more snow and cold at the Northeast, which had gotten more of that than it wanted over the weekend. The new precipitation and low mercury readings were not expected to be nearly as severe as the recent blizzard, but managed to push up anticipated heating load in the area again.

Quotes ran as high as $20 at Transco Zone 6-NYC and Iroquois Zone 2, but those two locations saw relatively moderate price increases in comparison to the triple-digit boosts for Dracut and Tennessee Zone 6. But in something of a quirk, the non-NYC pool of Transco’s Zone 6 and Texas Eastern M-3 fell by nearly 60 cents and about a quarter respectively.

Most Northeast citygates started close to flat but then ran up in later deals, explained a producer who trades the region. M-3 and non-NYC were the exceptions, which he thought was mostly a matter of timing, saying people apparently did most of their deals early at those two points. “Maybe this weekend” the Northeast will get back to average weather, which is around freezing in late January, he added, but first there will be another very cold spell Wednesday through Friday.

The producer saw the Northeast market as “purely weather-driven” and unrelated to Monday’s futures increase of nearly a quarter. He did acknowledge that the screen gain probably lent some support to quotes for Gulf Coast and Appalachian pipes. Despite the recent and upcoming cold sieges, there still are no serious problems with transport, he said.

Outside of the fresh bouts of cold in the Midwest and Northeast, heating demand is fairly minimal in the South and most of the West. Florida Gas Zone 3 saw the biggest Gulf Coast decline when the pipeline ended an Overage Alert Day notice.

A trader who markets gas for several Texas and Louisiana producers said it was a bit unsettling when a client reminded her that the February market is set up for another Nymex settlement coinciding with a storage report again earlier that day Thursday. The producer is kind of scared about the prospects for another reporting mistake messing up bidweek prices again like it did to the December market on the day before Thanksgiving. “One way or another, I think it [storage report] will skew Feburary prices, even if the report is neutral” to expectations, she said.

The trader and a marketer agreed that bidweek was fairly active on its first official day Tuesday. The trader said she did a TGT Zone 1 deal at physical basis of minus 8.5 cents.

The marketer said he was seeing Waha trading in the high $5.50s and the Chicago citygate from the mid $6.20s to the high $6.30s. Chicago basis had weakened since late last week to as low as minus 6 cents, he said. Index premiums were tracking the screen both up and down Tuesday, he added, reporting doing a Chicago deal at the NGI index plus a penny.

In the Jan. 31-Feb. 4 workweek, the National Weather Service predicts below normal temperatures everywhere south of a line running up the western Arizona border and curving eastward through southern Utah and Colorado into southwestern Oklahoma and North Louisiana, ending in Alabama’s Mobile Bay area. Above normal readings were forecast for the northern half of the U.S., excluding the Mid-Atlantic.

Lehman Brothers analyst Thomas Driscoll predicted what he called “a very strong withdrawal” from storage of 225 Bcf to be reported for the week ending Jan. 21.

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