While most of the market relaxed Wednesday with flat to slightlyhigher price performance, the Northeast was battening down thehatches in preparation for a rare visitor of late: honest togoodness winter weather like they used to have in the old days. Asa result, delivered prices in the Northeast shot higher bydouble-digit amounts, led by a spike of more than half a dollar toaround $3.20 for Transco Zone 6-NYC.

The run-up in New York City-area prices was partially signaled byTransco’s notice of a drastic cutback in IT availability taking effectFriday (see Transportation Notes). OnWednesday afternoon Tennessee said it would begin allocating volumesdownstream of Station 325 (Libertyville, NJ) in Zones 5 and 6.

Meanwhile, although it was colder in the Midwest than in theNortheast, Midwest citygates barely budged. A trader suggested thatwas largely due to more storage capacity being available in theMidwest. And much of the South was wondering if spring had arrivedin January as a number of cities were expected to sethigh-temperature records for the date Wednesday. That helped limitGulf Coast increases to 2-3 cents on most pipes.

Western markets were mostly featureless and tended to beWednesday’s weakest, a marketer said. He was hearing that PaloVerde’s 1,270-MW nuclear Unit 2 is now slated for restart Friday,an advance of two days from the Sunday talk of the day before.

Although the AGA report of 115 Bcf in storage withdrawals lastweek fit one source’s preliminary estimates of 110-120 Bcf, heconsidered it bearish because the bulk of the drawdown came in theWest and not the East. In addition, he said, “next week we’re goingup against a 203 [Bcf] year-ago figure, and there’s no way we’lleven come close to matching that.”

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