As some had expected, this week’s running of the bulls ground to a halt Thursday, weakened by yet another larger than normal September storage injection and modified predictions of colder near-term weather. A few scattered points were close to flat, while the majority fell from about 3 cents to nearly 15 cents.

It was C-note time again as the Energy Information Administration reported 100 Bcf in injections last week. The Nymex response was rather muted as natural gas futures eventually settled for a loss of a little less than a nickel. And the crude oil contract followed up Wednesday’s OPEC-inspired spike with an almost unchanged performance Thursday but remained above $28/bbl.

“I’d have to say it’s got to be the storage situation responsible for the new bearish trend,” said a Midwest utility buyer. “Remember last spring when everyone seemed so worried about refilling storage? Where are those worries now?” She added that some weather reporters seem to be trying to scare traders into being bullish, “but I’m not buying it.”

“A triple-digit injection in September?” exclaimed an incredulous marketer. ” I’m surprised it [screen] didn’t come down hard and fast.”

Other negative market signals came from the CenterPoint and Sonat pipelines, which indicated that their operational flexibility is being restricted by close-to-full storage facilities and/or upcoming outages (see Transportation Notes). Northwest’s bulletin board said that as of Sept. 23 the Jackson Prairie facility was less than 370,000 dekatherms shy of reaching maximum capacity, but best efforts injections remained available. And a utility buyer reported hearing that Northern Natural Gas had little space left for further storage injections.

And while forecasts for next week’s weather in the northern U.S. had sounded “cold” earlier this week, “now it’s more like cool,” one source commented. Cold fronts are due in the Northeast and Midwest this weekend, he said, but Chicago-area temperatures next week should be fairly seasonal; that is, on the chilly side but definitely not uncomfortable enough to get furnaces roaring.

Moderate is also the word around Calgary, according to a producer who said she played golf Wednesday and had to wear a jacket, but for this time of year the local weather is relatively mild.

A Mid-Atlantic trader found it hard to call Friday’s market direction Friday, finally concluding, “I guess I’m looking for flat.” He was weighing the storage report against regional weather that would get colder for the weekend but is expected to be cool but comfortable for the most part into early October.

Mercury readings close to 100 degrees were appearing again in the desert Southwest, with Phoenix expected to reach 101 Friday. But the renewed heat was unable to avert mild softening in western markets.

The Atlantic tropical front had been quiet for a change earlier this week, but things began to stir up quickly Thursday. However, at this point none of the activity is significant to the gas market. Juan became the 10th named tropical storm of the season and its center was about 200 miles south-southeast of Bermuda at 5 p.m. AST Thursday. Its north-northwest tracking, expected to be followed by a gradual turn to the north within 24 hours, would keep Juan well away from the U.S. East Coast and make the system extratropical over the colder waters of the North Atlantic as it approaches the Canadian Maritimes early next week, The Weather Channel said.

Meanwhile, Tropical Depression 16 formed about midway across the Atlantic but had a lot of ground to cover before potentially becoming of interest. It was about 1,450 miles east of the Lesser Antilles Thursday afternoon. It was uncertain whether a broad area of low pressure in the southwest Caribbean Sea and increasing thunderstorms between Honduras and the Caymans had a chance for tropical development, TWC said.

Several sources agreed that bidweek action stayed quiet Thursday, but the trend in prices was downward primarily due to the storage report, although one said softening was “probably helped along by the big EIA report, but they [prices] were already starting to fall even before the report came out.”

One trader said he wasn’t sure “if you can say Friday or Monday will be the heavy days. It seems like a lot of people are not interested in trading baseload, but will swing through October instead.” That’s not an unreasonable strategy, he said because “October’s a funny shoulder month. You can have utility load triple in just a few days, and then fall by a factor of three or so just as quickly.”

However, a marketer predicted that most bidweek trading will get done before the weekend, adding, “I expect there will be fewer early departures out of the office than on most Fridays.”

A producer reported a couple of Chicago citygates in the low $4.60s and a marketer quoted a Florida Gas Zone 3 basis deal at flat to last-day Nymex.

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