Increases in heating load, with more on the way, combined with the previous day’s 38.1-cent spike by December futures to keep cash prices on the rise at most points Wednesday. Expectations by some analysts of a rather small storage injection report Thursday may have added to the overall bullish mood.

Only three points had losses of about a nickel or a little more. Otherwise quotes were flat to about $1.45 higher. The biggest gains were concentrated in the Midcontinent, Rockies and Southwest basins.

All but eight points were trading at premiums to their first-of-month indexes as of Wednesday.

The cash market will continue to have prior-day screen support Thursday, but much less than before. December natural gas futures eked out a gain of 3 cents in a disconnect from the crude oil market, where prompt-month futures plummeted by more than $5/bbl (see related story).

The pace of reducing hurricane-related Gulf of Mexico (GOM) gas shut-ins appears to be picking up a bit. Minerals Management Service (MMS), which now has cut back its GOM production statistics updates to once a week on Wednesdays at 1 p.m. CST, said 62 companies reported 2,135 MMcf/d in remaining outages Wednesday. That was 304 MMcf/d less than the volume reported last Thursday. MMS also said oil shut-ins had dropped by 113,647 b/d to 246,103 b/d, while the count of evacuated platforms was unchanged at 71.

A previously innocuous-appearing tropical system might be getting more attention from traders. The National Hurricane Center accorded high development potential and the possibility of tropical depression status to a low-pressure area in the southwestern Caribbean Sea that was about 150 miles southeast of Cabo Gracias a Dios on the border of Nicaragua and Honduras Wednesday. NHC expected it to move slowly to the north or northwest for the next couple of days.

The Rockies market certainly doesn’t lack for heating demand these days with overnight lows starting to reach sub-freezing levels. The Midwest is beginning a cooling trend that includes possible blizzard conditions Thursday in the Upper Plains; however, the severest cold will be in a relatively sparsely populated region. Even the Midcontinent is about to get in on the cold weather act, with a low in the upper 30s expected Thursday in Oklahoma City.

Although below-normal temperatures are expected to engulf nearly all of the U.S. and Canada this weekend, for now the South is staying moderate while the Northeast is merely chilly.

Despite a high-inventory OFO by PG&E (see Transportation Notes), Malin and the PG&E citygate achieved upticks of a little less than 20 cents and nearly 13 cents, respectively.

El Paso and Westcoast were still reporting high linepack Wednesday. But Kern River was dealing with low linepack systemwide, which it attributed to issues upstream of the Pioneer processing plant Tuesday. However, Kern River said Wednesday the problems had been corrected and it was working with plant operator Enterprise to restore linepack to normal levels.

A Midcontinent producer noted that trends toward colder weather in the Midwest market area helped support prices in his region, and he thought some previously shut-in gas might be getting turned back on as a period of greater heating load approaches. Referring to further strong CenterPoint rebounds from their Monday abyss, he said CenterPoint shippers must be starting to find some outlets for their gas that weren’t there at the start of the week.

But despite rising prices in the last couple of days, Midcontinent production remains constrained on takeaway capacity, the producer said.

A marketer in the Upper Midwest said Wednesday afternoon temperatures were “pretty nice” in the 70s, but the area would see a slow cooling trend going through the weekend before warming up again. He said his company hasn’t bought any spot gas lately, trying to avoid getting caught long in a short month with a holiday period at the end. However, it probably will have to go into the daily market a little during the approaching cold spell, he said.

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