As they often are, Northeast citygates were conspicuous in an otherwise close to flat market Tuesday by giving back much of the large gains they had realized a day earlier. Most points saw little change as the Northeast and Midwest are due to see modest warm-ups Wednesday while the South begins turning colder.

Northeast delivered prices recorded losses ranging from about $1.70 to the $3.60 area. Flat quotes were common as nearly all points in the rest of the market were less than 10 cents up or down from unchanged.

Heating load is beginning to build in the South following a few days of spring-like daily highs. After peaking around 73 Tuesday, New Orleans had a Wednesday high 16 degrees lower in its forecast while the low was expected to remain in the mid 40s.

Meanwhile, the Midwest and Northeast will get a little relief from the latest blast of weekend cold that carried over into Tuesday. That doesn’t mean mild weather, though. Chicago’s low will rise from single digits Tuesday into the mid-teens Wednesday, and Boston can expect a Tuesday high around freezing to go to just over 40 degrees Wednesday. The slight warm-up won’t be universal; Pittsburgh is due to see its high-low range fall by about 4 degrees.

The respite from the cold will be brief as northern market-area temperatures will be heading lower again by Friday. And icy precipitation is still in the Wednesday forecast for several areas of the Midwest and Northeast.

A cold front will be bringing fresh snowfall to the northern mountain areas of the West, but for much of the region temperatures will be generally near to above average, according to The Weather Channel.

The screen’s lengthy series of prior-day support for cash prices finally ended Tuesday as the March natural gas futures contract, after wavering slightly to either side of flat for most of the day, finally succumbed to the negative guidance from weakness in Nymex’s petroleum products offerings and fell 9.5 cents.

It’s been a roller-coaster ride so far this week in Northeast pricing, and it looks like it will continue, said a regional marketer. “They keep changing the weather forecast, [getting] a little cooler each time,” he added. Temperatures will get a little warmer for midweek, but then cold returns, and most of next week also will feature frigid conditions, he said.

It illustrates the uncertainty of intermediate-term forecasts lately, the marketer continued. The meteorologists say a couple of weeks in advance how they expect the weather to be during a certain period, and then when the period arrives, something different happens, he lamented.

Calling Tuesday a “choppy trading day,” the marketer said his company got some calls for intraday supply from people who had expected the day’s big slide in Northeast prices but then got caught a little too short. He also commented, “People keep talking about a lot of LNG [liquefied natural gas] going to Europe, and that’s keeping the summer months well bid.”

A Midcontinent producer said he was a bit puzzled about the Northeast spikes Monday, but he noted that storage in the East “has been pulled on pretty hard this winter,” so Northeast buyers probably were trying to avoid withdrawing too much right now in case of severe late-winter cold.

A western trader said all is quiet on the western market front, especially in comparison with the recent alternations of frigid and moderate weather in the East and a Gulf Coast pipeline having a compressor station destroyed by a tornado-caused explosion. Commenting on futures trading, she said it seemed that the natural gas contract “finally decided to follow oil lower [Tuesday].”

Ron Denhardt of Winchester, MA-based Strategic Energy & Economic Research projects that a 106 Bcf storage withdrawal will be reported for the week ending Feb. 8.

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