Most of the cash market was softer as expected Thursday, but forecasts of warm to hot weather in much of the U.S. outside the West Coast over the Fourth of July weekend and late run-ups following release of the storage report allowed a few scattered points to record flat to mildly higher numbers. The losses tended to range from just under a nickel to about 35 cents, with a majority at 15 cents or less.

The Energy Information Administration broke its streak of triple-digit storage injection reports with one of 97 Bcf Thursday morning. The volume came in near the low end of previous expectations, and the screen jumped around a bit in reaction, but finally settled for a gain of 2.7 cents in a holiday-shortened session.

A couple of cash traders agreed that although overall prices were down, movement was in a somewhat jerky up-down-up-down pattern. One invoked the roller-coaster analogy. The path was all uphill for the few deals remaining to be done after the storage report came out, said a Canadian producer, who quoted intra-Alberta rising from the low C$5.40s to the mid C$5.50s.

A Midwest utility buyer said she knew of “a fair number” of gas-fired power units that would be running in the region for much of the weekend. Temperatures were due to be hot Friday and Saturday, followed by a cool-off on Sunday, she said. “I was betting on a low storage number, but not quite that low,” the buyer added. She reported being “pleased that the market didn’t overreact” to the EIA report, but noted that Nymex likely was well short of its normal complement of traders Thursday.

Several sources commented on the number of traders who had completed transactions through the weekend earlier in the week and thus were inactive Thursday, with an East Coast utility buyer calling it a “snoozeville” market. A Gulf Coast marketer considered himself “pretty lucky” to find most of his business counterparties in the office, saying, “I figure most traders were having to search around to get a deal.”

Both SoCalGas and PG&E had high-linepack OFOs in place for Friday (see Transportation Notes), but for some reason the impacts were quite different. The Southern California border saw the day’s biggest drop of about 35 cents, while the PG&E citygate was only barely lower.

It made a big difference to buy or sell early Thursday because late prices jumped after the storage number came out, a Northeast utility buyer said. Of course, when liquidity is reduced as it often is immediately before a holiday weekend, she noted, just a few deals can push prices in a big way.

Analyst Kyle Cooper of Citigroup said his “very initial” estimation for this week’s storage report calls for an injection “to exceed 100 Bcf and probably closer to 110 Bcf.” That would compare with 67 Bcf a year ago and a five-year average of 73 Bcf. Cooper explained his prognostication caution by saying, “We were unfortunately again caught in a ‘two-week average’ problem. Our estimation for [week ending June 20] was for a build of 112 Bcf while [week ending June 27] forecast [was for] a build of 109 Bcf. The sum of those estimations equals 221 Bcf, while actual builds were 224 Bcf. We would be satisfied with that accuracy if we were not 15 Bcf low, then 12 Bcf high.”

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