With super-cold weather not yet arrived but on the way, Northeast citygates soared Thursday, with some points rising a dollar or more. But otherwise there wasn’t much price strength to be found in trading for the long holiday weekend. Gulf Coast numbers were mixed, and quotes for the Midcontinent/Midwest and West fell uniformly.

Transco Zone 6-New York City topped out at $13.40, although its average was about $4 cheaper in an ultrawide trading range, to easily lead all gains. The Gulf Coast went in both directions, from down as much as about 30 cents to nearly 20 cents higher. In the rest of the market, losses ranged from about a dime to nearly 45 cents.

Many pipes had various constraints already in place or scheduled to cope with the deep freeze in most of the East and as far west as the Rockies. However, as of midafternoon Thursday none were considered especially serious since little besides interruptible capacity was expected to be at risk, although Texas Eastern said it would “force balance short pools as necessary to maintain system balance and operational reliability.” And Tennessee warned of the potential for wellhead freeze-offs in the Gulf Coast production area (see Transportation Notes).

Florida Gas Transmission was a conspicuous exception to the overall pipeline situation. It issued an Underage Alert Day notice (see Transportation Notes), citing mild weather forecasts for its market area and rising linepack.

The Energy Information Administration exceeded most — but not all — prior expectations in announcing a 123 Bcf storage withdrawal for the week ending Dec. 17. Nymex traders treated the report as mildly bearish, sending January gas futures down 15.2 cents. The petroleum-related futures contracts also saw moderate declines.

As expected, cash gas was rather thinly traded Thursday, so little impact from the storage report is likely in that area until Monday. Because much of the eastern cold was expected to be dissipating around Sunday and forecasts indicate above normal temperatures throughout the East this week, a softening cash market is anticipated for most if not all of the week.

But as of Thursday, frigid temperatures and copious snowfalls covered nearly the entire Midwest and parts of the South, making travel hazardous and setting furnaces to roaring. The Northeast was due to join them in such conditions Friday. A marketer in the Upper Midwest reported a “huge snowstorm” overnight in her city, although she said the sun was “trying to peek out” at midday Thursday. She speculated that increased storage use was the only reason for regional prices to be considerably weaker.

A Gulf Coast producer who trades the Northeast said it was actually “balmy in the 50s” in the New York City area Thursday afternoon. A mass of arctic air from Canada was mostly moving southward through the middle of the continent that day, he said, but was scheduled to spread into the Northeast and take temperatures to freezing and below over the holiday weekend. Transco Zone 6-NYC and its $13.40 peak was “the only one [point] that really got crazy,” although he did see a little $10 gas in New England, the producer said.

Cash volumes were quite a bit lighter than usual because a fairly large amount of supply had been traded Wednesday through the weekend, he continued. However, trader absences weren’t as heavy as he had expected. “Most of our usual counterparties were in today,” including some utility customers, the producer said. Almost no bidweek trading got done, he added, although some people had tried to get January deals done earlier in the week. He probably echoed the sentiments of many in commenting that luckily there’s no chance of a “surprise” from the EIA when January futures expire Tuesday.

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