Last week’s market rally was starting to fade in trading for the weekend. Eastern points were mixed Friday, with price movement both up and down, but trending largely toward the downside, while the West was solidly in a softening mode with considerably larger declines.

The reversal in market momentum came even as the winter-like weather that had prompted the earlier upticks was reaching its peak in both low temperatures and breadth of impact. Snow was reported Friday in Wyoming, Denver and along Minnesota’s border with Canada, and was expected over the weekend in the Great Lakes region. Meanwhile, a freeze predicted for Friday night in the Oklahoma and Texas Panhandles was expected to move eastward from there.

But the usual slump in weekend industrial demand, a sense among some traders that last week’s move higher may have been overbought, and sharply lower futures prices for gas and other hydrocarbon fuels combined to return a bearish feeling to the cash market. Nobody was looking for any rebound this week, either. “There’s just nothing to avoid it [further price declines] unless the weather turns freakish,” one source said.

That ain’t going to happen, according to the National Weather Service. It anticipates above normal temperatures across the eastern half of the U.S. by midweek, and the western area, where below normal readings are likely toward the end of the week, is sparsely populated for the most part.

Few traders put much stock in Tropical Depression 11 having any market impact, at least not before they return to their offices this morning. “It was something we could ignore for the weekend,” a marketer said. “You might as well not sweat what you can’t control.” However, by the time many were getting ready to go home Friday afternoon, TD 11 had developed into Tropical Storm Iris and was believed to have potential for becoming a hurricane Saturday. As of 4 p.m. EDT Friday Iris was about 155 miles south of Ponce, Puerto Rico and moving to the west-northwest at nearly 17 mph, the National Weather Service said.

Nearly all of Friday’s small increases occurred at Northeast citygates, where conditions were still fairly mild Friday, but which was due to catch the brunt of the cold front Saturday. Also, Florida citygates were up about a nickel in highly volatile trading, as FGT issued a low-linepack OFO for its market area (see Transportation Notes).

Outside of the Northeast and Florida, upticks were scarce. The trend was downward in nearly all markets in sympathy with a falling screen, sources said. PG&E citygates and border-PG&E prices took the day’s biggest hits, because although the utility did not issue a weekend OFO, it was projecting linepack above its maximum target level Sunday.

A Rockies marketer said she was seeing some minor constraints through Kern River’s Muddy Creek Station due to over-nominations, but “otherwise it’s pretty quiet here.”

A Chicago trader reported doing December-February citygate basis deals at plus 13 cents. Basis for the November-March strip was cheaper, he said, “but plus 13 seems about right for the heart of winter.”

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