Buffeted once again by a screen plunge the day before and still finding weather-related demand hard to come by, the cash market continued to see prices fall in most cases Friday. However, flat to nearly a dime higher numbers at the Southern California border and a few Midcontinent/Midwest points averted a clean sweep of softness.

In deals done for Monday-only flows because the first of May falls on that day, the majority losses ranged from about a nickel to 45 cents or so. Points in the West tended to see most of the smallest dips. Not coincidentally, that region is expected is expected to see well above average temperatures through the end of this week that will take highs in the Phoenix area into the mid-90s by Monday, The Weather Channel said.

One source speculated that the lack of a typical weekend slump in industrial load may have given some points just enough traction to avoid the overall declines, possibly abetted by buying for storage injections.

Friday’s losses left only a few Northeast citygates still averaging $7 or more, and they weren’t clearing the $7 level by much. However, an Atlantic storm was expected to keep parts of upper New England no warmer than the 40s as the week begins.

Stormy weather was due to dominate the Midwest and South through the weekend, but forecasts of benign temperatures ensured that gas demand remained fairly modest.

Southern Natural Gas, which had considered a Type 6 OFO for long imbalances Saturday as “highly likely” as of Thursday, changed its mind Friday and said a weekend OFO was “unlikely.”

A Houston-based marketer reported that effective May 1, Nicor is changing the allocations at its citygate meters throughout northern Illinois that had annoyed many Chicago traders during April. “We’re hoping” that the changes will make Nicor’s caps easier to work with in May than they were in April, he said. He noted that Alliance deliveries commanded about a nickel premium over otherwise flat Chicago citygates. Alliance is allotted only 35,000 Dth/d into Nicor under the new allocations, “which isn’t all that much,” the marketer said, but there probably was more demand for Alliance gas going into Vector Pipeline. Northern Border, NGPL and Northern Natural Gas are also affected by the Nicor revisions, he added.

Except for the major Nymex slide during the three-day countdown to settlement, the marketer found it to be an “uneventful bidweek.” There probably were a few people tying up loose ends Friday, but he was unaware of any significant May baseload business still going on.

A utility buyer in the Lower Midwest said heavy rain was cooling off his area Friday, but temperatures around 70 degrees meant that neither furnaces nor air conditioners are running much. “The end of April and early May is a pretty quiet period for us,” he said.

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