Cash prices were pushed lower at most locations Friday by a combination of prior-day futures softness, cool but generally moderate weather and the tendency of industrial load to take the weekend off.

Several flat to about a nickel higher points prevented an across-the-board run of declines. Losses ranging from 2-3 cents to about 15 cents tended to be highest in the Rockies. Producers in the region will have to continue enduring an outage of Questar’s Clay Basin storage facility, which one estimated as being worth 600 MMcf/d of injection capacity, until Thursday.

While Thursday’s 11-cent decline by May futures was a bearish factor for the cash market Friday, a screen rebound of 16.1 cents to $4.070 (see related story) will give physical gas a chance to regain its price footing Monday. With the cash and futures markets moving in opposite directions, Friday’s trading left Henry Hub at a deficit of about 17 cents to Nymex’s prompt-month contract.

The Southern California border saw one of the day’s larger drops of about a dime after SoCalGas extended a high-linepack OFO through at least Saturday (see Transportation Notes).

Although prices fell about 7 cents in Transco’s Zone 6-New York pool, volumes traded there on the IntercontinentalExchange platform rose from 150,600 MMBtu Thursday to 172,500 MMBtu Friday.

It’s been about three weeks since spring officially started, but snow hasn’t disappeared from the forecast yet. Following an early week report of frozen precipitation in the Rockies, The Weather Channel (TWC) said a snowfall was likely late Friday in parts of northern New England and upstate New York, although no appreciable accumulation was expected, before a warming trend was due late in the weekend. After some rather chilly conditions late last week, the Midwest was starting to return to cool but decidedly milder weather going into the weekend.

TWC predicted that the South would start seeing warmer temperatures again during the weekend into early this week, but it was unlikely to get as hot as the cooling load-boosting heat of early last week.

Lows in the 20s were forecast for Saturday in parts of Western Canada, but the Rockies were likely to stay a little above freezing over the weekend. Snow showers were expected in upper elevations of the Pacific Northwest, TWC said. Most of the West would be cool to moderate, but the Phoenix area was likely to approach 90-degree highs.

Baker Hughes said its count of drilling rigs searching for gas in the United States was up by 10 to 959 during the week ending April 9. All of the additions occurred onshore, Baker Hughes said, with its Gulf of Mexico tally remaining unchanged. The active gas rig count has now risen for 15 straight weeks.

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