Prices rose across the board Wednesday between about a dime and 30 cents in most cases, fueled by the approach of cold fronts in the Northeast and Midwest and feeding somewhat off the previous day’s screen gain of nearly 20 cents. New England citygates were overachievers with upticks approaching half a dollar.

Last week’s forecasts of new winter storms moving in from the Arctic late this week, which appeared to be repudiated and then reaffirmed earlier this week, are expected to finally be validated starting Thursday. However, although that would appear to guarantee further price hikes going forward, some weren’t so sure.

“I look for cash softness Thursday,” a Houston-based trader said, rationalizing his belief by adding that the return of freezing weather had been “hyped” too much. He recalled that local television weather people late last week were talking about how this cold front from Canada would push into the Houston area, but now they’re saying it won’t get as far south as expected. In fact, it looks like a good portion of the Southeast might be spared from the cold invasion, the trader said. He added that a further reason to expect softening was some of his Gulf Coast quotes falling nearly a dime in later deals Wednesday.

In much the same vein, a western marketer said it doesn’t look like the cold front would have much impact in the Rockies or other parts of the West. The Denver area is anticipating temperatures in the 40s for the weekend, “and that’s not cold at all for mid-January,” he said.

Observing that many expectations for Thursday morning’s storage report center around a withdrawal of 100-110 Bcf, another source suggested that such a volume (if realized) would be highly bearish in comparison to the comparable year-ago pull of 199 Bcf.

A Northeast utility buyer reported seeing “good market-area spreads” over Appalachian and Gulf Coast production-area numbers, saying they “covered our variable costs easily.” Taking note of the extra strength of New England points, he said Tennessee was restricting its 200 and 300 Lines in the market area, putting a squeeze on supplies. Furthermore, with Algonquin still restricting due-shipper imbalance make-ups and limiting volumes through the Cromwell (CT) Station, he expects the pipeline “probably will issue an OFO Friday” as the weather gets more severe. As a measure of the price volatility that such extreme weather can bring, the buyer said Wednesday afternoon that on an online platform he was seeing the Algonquin citygate for the rest of month at $7.50 bid and $14.50 offered. It’s going to take some kind of haggling to narrow that gap, he quipped.

Although no OFO was issued, PG&E citygates got support from the utility projecting that linepack would flirt with minimum target levels in the next few days.

Looking ahead, a marketer said concerns about a potential emergency in winter supplies appeared to be abating. “By now I don’t think anyone expects us to run out of storage before injection season starts again,” he said. “The real question is what’s going on with lagging production, and that’s a next-winter issue. There’s certainly no problem for the utilities now, and they don’t want to pay the high prices they’re seeing currently.”

Turning to another subject, the marketer reported a growing “buzz in the Rockies” about getting ready for the Kern River expansion, saying it was causing a lot of volatility in summer basis talk.

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