Friday’s market was almost a complete reversal of the trend over the previous two days. This time prices were up in most of the East, while the Midcontinent and most of the West recorded large losses. Growing heating load in the Northeast and the previous day’s futures advance of 11.1 cents were chiefly responsible for the firmness. The softness could be attributed to declines in both heating and cooling demand and the drop of industrial load during a weekend.

A few western markets (Northern California, Pacific Northwest and Western Canada) joined most eastern points in being flat to up about 20 cents. Most drops were in triple digits in ranging from about 40 cents to $1.55 or so.

The cash market will continue to have screen support from the prior trading day when the November natural gas contract went along with strength throughout Nymex’s energy futures complex by rising 8.3 cents (see related story).

Going into the weekend the key northern market areas were headed in opposite temperature directions. The Midwest was in a warming trend, although conditions would still be rather chilly. The Northeast was cooling off following pleasantly moderate weather through Thursday.

The South is feeling quite fall-like, with only Florida seeing daily highs above the mid 70s. It’s actually getting downright chilly in some locations such as Charlotte, NC, where Weather Central predicted Saturday’s low and high at 41 and 63, respectively.

It would actually be considerably warmer in some nonmountain areas of the Rockies. Denver was expected to see a peak temperature of 78 Saturday. And coastal Southern California, which had a modicum of cooling load at midweek with highs in the low to mid 80s, was cooling off to the low to mid 70s during the weekend.

Frontier Weather predicted Friday greater-than-normal heating demand over the succeeding five days from the Northeast through the Mid-Atlantic to as far south as northern South Carolina. It looked for lower-than-normal heating demand in the relatively sparsely populated area from eastern Washington state and Oregon to northwest Minnesota at the north end and narrowing to most of New Mexico at the south end. The forecaster saw greater-than-normal cooling load only in the desert Southwest, with normal cooling demand due in the rest of the U.S.

Even though it regained injection capacity Friday at the Aliso Canyon storage field, which had been shut down since Monday due to wildfires, SoCalGas found it necessary to issue a high-linepack OFO (see Transportation Notes). In response, the Southern California border, SoCal citygate and Southern border, PG&E saw nearly identical plunges of nearly $1.50 each.

Northern Natural-Ventura was the only rising Midcontinent location, and that likely was because it’s more of a market-area point than a production-area point.

Northern market areas are “getting closer” to substantive heating load, said a Midwestern marketer. Temperatures have been getting into the upper 30s at night recently, and most people will turn on a furnace when it’s that cold, he said.

Midcontinent quotes took a dive Friday after being mostly stronger earlier in the week partly because of warmer weather in its primary market area of the Midwest, the marketer continued. Also, he said, pipeline maintenance in the Permian Basin was limiting access there for Midcontinent gas and keeping more of it at home.

Prices probably will be a little stronger Monday, he said, citing the return of industrial load from a weekend and Friday’s screen gain.

Air conditioners are still running in the Southwest, a western trader said, but they’ll be turned off by the end of the month. The region should have some heating load coming along about that time, he added.

In what likely is a reflection of recent producer decisions to cut back on exploration in light of lower gas prices and the global financial crisis (see Daily GPI, Oct. 7), 11 drilling rigs left the U.S. search for natural gas in the week ending Oct. 7, leaving the active level at 1,537, according to the Baker Hughes Rotary Rig Count (https://intelligencepress.com/features/bakerhughes/). Ten of the departures were onshore and one was from the Gulf of Mexico. The latest Baker Hughes tally was down 3% from a month ago but 7% above year-earlier levels.

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