Prices continued to soar at Northeast citygates Thursday as a major winter storm was targeting that region and the Mid-Atlantic going into the weekend. But with temperatures remaining merely cold in the Midwest and still refusing to go below freezing in the South and much of the West outside the Rockies, the rest of the market was flat to moderately lower.

Several non-Northeast points were around flat while Northeast quotes rose by as much as about 80 cents. Nearly all of the losses ranging from 2-3 cents to a little more than 15 cents elsewhere were in single digits.

The Energy Information Administration had another bearish storage report for traders, saying 115 Bcf had been withdrawn in the week ending Jan. 29. Although some prior estimates had been in the low 110s Bcf, consensus expectations had been in the low to mid 120s Bcf. However, despite the apparent bearishness of the latest report, especially in comparison with much larger year-ago and five-year average pulls, March futures fell only 0.3 cent after wavering on either side of flat for much of the day (see related story).

Much of the U.S. is experiencing seasonal to slightly above-normal temperatures. But most of Canada will continue to see lows in the single digits and teens, while the northern half of the Atlantic Coast was bracing for a whopper of a storm that might dump up to two feet of snow in the Mid-Atlantic by Saturday night. As a Washington Post headline indicated, “Incoming Storm Likely to be Historic…”

Although the Mid-Atlantic is expected to endure the brunt of the storm’s worst effects, Transco Zone 5 saw only about a nickel’s increase.

Somewhat surprisingly, considering the blizzard-like conditions setting up on the upper half of the Eastern Seaboard, pipeline restrictions into the area were virtually nil other than Texas Eastern, Iroquois and Algonquin asking shippers to keep nominated volumes and actual flows in balance.

Reflecting the increasing Northeast demand, Tennessee said 85,013 MMBtu had been nominated for Wednesday at its Agawam, MA, delivery point into Iroquois and Algonquin, which can redeliver gas to points in Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Jersey, an El Paso Corp. spokesman said. For Thursday the nominated volume at Agawam had jumped to 105,013 MMBtu, leaving only 15,601 MMBtu unused out of Agawam’s total capacity of 120,614 MMBtu/d.

But in the Upper Midwest, a marketer said “so far” the current winter hasn’t been all that bad. There were 60-plus inches of snow in her area through early February last year, she said, but only 27 inches to date in 2010. Actually, she added, she thought the recent snow levels would be even less.

The marketer said her company was still buying a little spot gas each day, primarily for customer space heating needs. There were no transport restrictions on the Michigan utilities at this time, she said.

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