A long weekend following a bearish storage report and related screen dip, along with benign weather scenarios in nearly all markets, had the predictable effect on cash numbers Friday: double-digit declines in nearly all cases. Although a few scattered points contained their losses to a little less than a dime, a large majority fell 15 cents or more, led by plunges of 30 cents-plus in the Rockies/Pacific Northwest and nearly a dollar in the San Juan Basin.

A Midcontinent source said prices recovered a bit from early depths, fell back, then rose again. Most of the cash movement tracked whatever was happening on the screen at the time, she said.

The National Weather Service had a rather bearish forecast for the May 26-30 period. It called for below normal temperatures south and east of a line stretching westward from Pennsylvania through the Midwest and then curving south in Nebraska through the Midcontinent and central Texas. Above normal readings were projected from the Upper Plains through the Rockies and into California and the Southwest.

The upcoming holiday made Friday an abbreviated work day for many traders, exemplified by one’s comment that “as soon as the screen closed, most people said, ‘That’s enough and I’m gone!'”

A Southwest buyer saw the end of an OFO-like constraint on El Paso (see Transportation Notes) as a key factor in San Juan’s extreme weakness, and said that meant more basin supply was able to compete for a home with Rockies gas, spreading the softening effect northward. Also, he said, predicted desert Southwest highs of 100 degrees or less for the weekend “seemed relatively balmy compared to our 100-plus readings earlier in the week.” The buyer also noted that on Tuesday, the highest-load day of the four-day period covered by Friday’s trading, Transwestern flows on its San Juan Lateral would be unencumbered, and some traders undoubtedly took the loss of that constraint into account. A maintenance outage cutting 610,000 MMBtu/d of the lateral’s normal 860,000 MMBtu/d capacity is scheduled to be completed Monday.

Even though PG&E didn’t get around to issuing a high-linepack OFO (see Transportation Notes) until most trading had been completed, “everybody knew one would get called and acted accordingly,” a marketer said. Although inland California was quite hot earlier in the week, most of the state’s air conditioning load was vanishing for the weekend, he added.

A Calgary-based producer said she had no intra-Alberta swing numbers to report because of numerous plant turnarounds in the province. However, she did quote a June Aeco deal in the mid C$6.80s.

Apparently Kern River pricing continues to derive strength from the expansion that went into effect May 1, although not as much as before. One western trader quoted a Kern River deal for June in the mid $5.10s Friday, while another reported a couple of San Juan-Blanco packages 2-3 cents lower. May’s Kern River index of $4.33 had exceeded Blanco’s by 18 cents, reflecting the initial Rockies producer euphoria over the expansion. As recently as in April indexes, the Blanco index of $3.63 still commanded its heretofore customary premium, exceeding Kern River by 37 cents.

Citigroup analyst Kyle Cooper’s initial estimation for this week’s storage report looks for an injection in the low 90s Bcf. That would compare with a year-ago figure of 72 Bcf and a five-year average of 73 Bcf, he said.

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