Trends toward milder temperatures prompted price declines at a large majority of points Friday. The bearish weekend impact of reduced industrial load was heightened by the Christmas holiday being taken off Monday.

The Northeast was something of a puzzling market area, though; although most of the regional trading locations participated in the general softening, they were accompanied by gains at several other points.

Double-digit losses were prevalent among quotes falling from a little less than a nickel to about 65 cents. The few upticks, all in the Northeast, ranged from a couple of pennies to nearly 20 cents.

January futures ended three days of small increases with a downturn of 5.5 cents Friday (see related story), giving cash traders modestly negative guidance when they return to their offices Tuesday.

Line 300 in Tennessee’s Zone 4, where most Marcellus Shale supplies vie to get aboard the pipe for a trek to Northeast markets, experienced a return to the bargain basement bottom-end prices that had plagued the point prior to the addition of new Marcellus takeaway capacity during the fall. With a low quote of $1.40, Line 300 took the day’s biggest hit in falling about 65 cents into the low $2.40s, according to IntercontinentalExchange (ICE). Line 200 prices in the zone commanded a premium of a little more than 60 cents above the Line 300 numbers.

Two pipes serving the Northeast market seemed to have different outlooks for holiday weekend demand. Iroquois had taken action Thursday aimed at avoiding the buildup of excess linepack (see Daily GPI, Dec. 23). However, Algonquin was encouraging shippers to either stay in balance or run positive imbalances.

Meanwhile, Tennessee was encouraging negative imbalances in its upstream zones from South Texas through the Marcellus Shale area (see Transportation Notes). And Southern said it was “too close to call” on whether it would need to implement an OFO Type 6 against long imbalances from Saturday through Monday.

With PG&E’s low-inventory OFO being canceled Saturday, citygate numbers dropped nearly a dime. Volumes traded on the ICE platform plummeted by more than half from 909,200 MMBtu Thursday to only 410,600 MMBtu Friday.

Northern Natural Gas signaled milder, although still cold, temperatures approaching in its Upper Midwest market area. With a normal system-weighted temperature of 18 degrees at this time of year, a bulletin board posting projected that the average would rise from 26 Friday to 32 Saturday and 31 each on Sunday and Monday.

The National Weather Service has an end-of-year forecast that looks pretty bearish for gas prices. It expects above-normal temperatures during the Dec. 28-Jan. 1 period for essentially the northern three-fourths of the U.S., leaving normal conditions only in New Mexico, most of Texas and a swath from Louisiana through the Carolinas. The agency predicts below-normal readings only in Florida’s Panhandle and the upper half of the peninsula along with southern portions of Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina.

It wouldn’t be a white Christmas for a utility staffer in the Lower Midwest, but that was just fine with her. Lows were expected to remain in the 20s Friday and Saturday, she said, but it was sunny outside and a warming trend would get under way as soon as Saturday.

In a report issued a day earlier than usual due to the holiday, the Baker Hughes Rotary Rig Count chalked up a major drop in gas-oriented drilling — down 16 units to 802 — for the week ending Dec. 22. All of the rig deactivations occurred onshore, with the Gulf of Mexico tally unchanged, Baker Hughes said. The latest total is down 7% from a month ago and 14% lower than the year-earlier level.

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