With an arctic air mass spreading its thermometer level-dropping impact into the Northeast and most of the South, prices were flat to about 80 cents higher at most points Wednesday. However, only the Northeast saw major increases; elsewhere, gains were limited to about a quarter and were mostly in single digits.

The few losses ranged from a couple of pennies to a little more than 70 cents and were concentrated in the Midwest and at Western Canada-related points.

The Plains area will remain stormy Thursday, with as much as six to eight inches of snow to blanket the area to as far north as Chicago, The Weather Channel (TWC) said. But the Chicago low was expected to jump from about 10 degrees Wednesday to 25 Thursday, causing the citygate to drop nearly a dime. Lows in the 30s will be showing up in much of the South, although the Florida peninsula will remain relatively toasty. The Miami forecast for Thursday had a high around 80.

It was stormy in the Northeast Wednesday, but Thursday will be fairly calm before a new storm arrives around Friday, AccuWeather.com predicted.

Western lows will range from the teens in the Rockies to the 60s in Southern California and southwest Arizona, TWC said.

Thursday’s cash market will have moderate support from the March futures gain of just over a dime Wednesday in the contract’s prompt-month debut.

OFOs or other pipeline restrictions were proliferating again (see Transportation Notes) as cold weather engulfed most of the U.S. and Canada.

Supply shortfall issues were surfacing in the West. PG&E was late in declaring a low-inventory OFO for Wednesday and extended it into Thursday. The PG&E citygate rose a little more than a dime, but Malin was flat. Kern River reported low linepack systemwide Wednesday due to delivery point drafting. And El Paso said low linepack prompted it to set the probability of declaring a Strained Operating Condition or Critical Operating Condition to high Wednesday.

However, NOVA Inventory Transfer and Sumas took big dives as Western Canada appeared to be recovering a bit from a siege of harsh winter weather. NOVA indicated that intra-Alberta production was returning to normal by restoring its usual imbalance tolerance range. The negative price impact was lighter at Westcoast Station 2, which fell a little less than C10 cents.

Arguing that it was “not all that cold” in northern market areas, a Texas-based marketer said Wednesday’s price gains did not appear to be justified based on weather fundamentals. Trading spot gas for the first of month is usually kind of screwy, making a call on price direction difficult, he said. But he guessed that Thursday’s numbers will be mostly close to flat or up slightly.

The marketer said he didn’t see any new bidweek business being done Wednesday. There “probably was a little of it,” he acknowledged, but none that he was aware of. He estimated that NGI‘s Chicago index will be $8.12.

High winds and snow were creating white-out conditions in much of the Northeast Wednesday, a regional utility buyer said. But despite the major snowstorm, he agreed with the marketer that predicted temperatures didn’t seem cold enough to justify the price increases (New York City’s forecasted low for Thursday is 32).

The buyer said his company didn’t buy any new baseload for February. It’s still got enough storage and term gas that it will supplement as necessary in the daily market during February, he said. Storage withdrawals will likely be at the maximum daily rate often because the utility is “getting a little behind on where we want to be on withdrawing storage,” he said.

Ron Denhardt, vice president, natural gas services at Strategic Energy & Economic Research, looks for a storage withdrawal of 267 Bcf to be reported for the week ending Jan. 25. First Enercast Financial is predicting a pull of 260 Bcf. Citigroup analyst Tim Evans said he expects the Energy Information Administration to announce draws of 250 Bcf, 170 Bcf and 150 Bcf for the weeks ending Jan. 25, Feb. 1 and Feb. 8, respectively.

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