The cash market saw both up and down price movement again Friday, but this time the gainers outranked the losers. Support from a prior-day screen gain of nearly 15 cents and moderately strong power generation load across the southern half of the U.S. offset generally mild northern weather and the decline in industrial demand that is typical of weekend periods.

Except for impressive increases at all Midwest delivery points, individual market areas were hardly models of consistency. Virtually all had flat to as much as 30 cents lower quotes tucked into overall increases that ranged from a couple of pennies to about 40 cents. Southern Natural Gas displaced Florida Gas Transmission Zone 3 for the distinction of having the Gulf Coast’s top quote ($12.10), but FGT Zone 3 still averaged about a quarter higher than Southern.

The process of eliminating Hurricane Katrina-related shut-ins continued to labor along Friday. Minerals Management Service (MMS) said natural gas production outages had dwindled to 3.829 Bcf/d Friday, down about 190 MMcf/d from the day before (see related story).

Based on its monitoring of flows on pipelines with offshore connections (and counting Louisiana onshore Gulf volumes), Bentek Energy, LLC said Gulf Coast production was slightly above 6 Bcf/d Friday, or about 60% of pre-Katrina flow. Cumulative production losses attributable to the hurricane since Aug. 26, the last full flow day before the storm, increased to 77.0 Bcf, Bentek said. Going by Evening Cycle nominations on pipeline electronic bulletin boards for Friday’s gas day, it noted the Mississippi Canyon and Chandeleur systems remained totally shut in. Among major interstate pipes, Bentek calculated that Tennessee, Southern Natural Gas and Destin Pipeline were seeing the greatest residual impact from Katrina Friday with shortfalls (compared to Aug. 26 volumes) of 1,180, 864 and 676 MMcf/d respectively. For more information, see www.bentekenergy.com.

Although a cold front will have much of the Midwest cooled off again around Tuesday or so, the weekend was looking rather hot and muggy for the region. A marketer said the Upper Midwest would see highs around 90 degrees or maybe greater Sunday and Monday. And according to The Weather Channel (TWC), Chicago could be just three degrees shy of date-specific record highs on those days.

Northeast conditions would be cool enough that frost advisories were possible in mountainous parts of upstate New York and New England, TWC said. And a cold front was due to take weekend daytime temperatures as much as 15 degrees below average in upper sections of the West, it added. Otherwise, normal late-summer heat was expected to prevail across the South and Southwest.

A Gulf Coast producer expressed surprise at seeing heavy buying for storage injections late last week, leading her to expect “a pretty large volume” in the upcoming report from the Energy Information Administration. She surmised that people may have been trying to make up for a subpar build in inventories during the week ending Sept. 2, when hurricane-prompted Gulf of Mexico shut-ins were accompanied by a net withdrawal of 6 Bcf in the Producing Region to make up for the shortfalls in offshore supply.

The producer reported “no problems at all” placing gas Friday, even with power generation load a bit lacking in northern market areas. The market seemed to be trying to settle down again after all the Katrina-related upheavals, she said.

A Texas marketer noted that the Dallas-Fort Worth area would be hitting the mid to high 90s through the weekend, meaning air conditioning load would be strong in the Lone Star state. El Paso-Permian and Waha quotes were up about a dime or slightly more Friday.

Other than delivering cooling rains to the northeast Florida/southern Georgia market area late last week, Hurricane Ophelia (downgraded to a tropical storm after achieving hurricane status Thursday and then reelevated to a hurricane Friday afternoon) had looked like a gas market nonevent. However, if it follows a new tracking projection by the National Hurricane Center (NHC), Ophelia could be dampening power generation load in the Southeast again early this week. After moving slowly northeastward Friday, the storm was expected to take a westerly turn over the weekend that would have it approaching the Georgia/South Carolina coast by midday Monday, NHC said. At 5 p.m. EDT Friday Ophelia’s center was about 175 miles east-northeast of Daytona Beach, FL and about 220 miles south-southeast of Charleston, SC.

For Ron Denhardt of Strategic Energy & Economic Research, the damage to three southeast Louisiana processing plants will be an influential market factor for some time to come. He noted Dynegy’s CEO Bruce Williamson has been quoted as saying the company’s Yscloskey plant (1.85 Bcf/d) and Venice plant (1.3 Bcf/d) may be down for three to six months. And the 1.1 Bcf/d Toca facility, partially owned by Enterprise Products Partners, may be down for “a few weeks,” according to a statement by a spokesman last week, Denhardt said.

“A limited amount of gas can be blended,” he went on. “Rerouting will not be easy because the [idle] processing plants are located in eastern Louisiana and the extra capacity in processing capability is in western Louisiana. The major pipeline flow is from west to east. Given the likely basis differentials, we believe that substantial gas will be processed, but at the time we do [not] know how much.”

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