At the end of a week that had mostly signaled price softness,the bottom fell out in the cash market Friday as quotes plummetedby 20 cents or so at nearly all Eastern points. Much like thepreceding days, many Western points proved a bit more resistant tothe overall softness. California border points fell a dime, anddrops on Rockies pipes were mostly in the low to mid teens.

The big surprise came in Alberta, where initially flat numbersin the low C$2.20s were soaring as high as C$2.40 in the afternoon,said a marketer who averaged around C$2.30 on the day. He wasmystified about the reason for the run-up; it was snowing in thenorthern half of the province Friday, he said, but there stillwasn’t enough gas demand to really matter. Westcoast Station 2 wasflat in the mid C$2.20s, and Sumas saw the day’s smallest declinein U.S. currency of about 7 cents.

The weekend price rout left the majority of points well belowindex. Northeast citygates were barely on the plus side of $2,compared to bidweek averages in the mid $2.30s. Malin was a rarepoint still trading positive to index, while intra-Alberta, theRockies and Southern California border were at or just below index.

After having narrowed to about a quarter Thursday, thecash-futures spread zoomed wider again Friday. A screen decline ofa little over a nickel to $2.191 compared with one of more than 20cents at Henry Hub, leaving the Hub about 40 cents below theNovember futures contract.

Nothing had changed in market fundamentals-they were still asweak as ever, sources said. That doesn’t seem likely to changeanytime soon, either. The National Weather Service’s six-to-10-dayforecast issued Friday called for normal to above-normaltemperatures across nearly all of the nation except for abelow-normal West Coast prediction.

A marketer commented that Columbia-Appalachia pricingessentially was even with Northeast citygates Firday at just over$2, and said the TCO pool hasn’t been much more than 2 cents underdelivered numbers for almost three months due to continuingconstraints at the interconnects. However, the pool-citygate spreadshould widen again during the winter, he said.

An aggregator noted that Northwest-domestic was trading severalcents above “the Juan” [San Juan Basin] Friday, and said hewouldn’t be surprised to see Northwest quotes eventually surpass”the Perm” [Permian Basin] this week. Northwest and Permian quoteswere at parity with each other Friday.

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