Prices continued to rise at nearly all points Friday as weekend heating load was rising from the Northeast through the Rockies, cooling load remained substantial from the western half of the South through inland California, and anecdotal evidence indicated that the pace of storage injection purchases remains strong. The weekend drop of industrial demand apparently had little market impact.

Three Southwest points with flat numbers were left out of the overall advance, which saw two western points that had recently been unusually weak (El Paso’s San Juan-Bondad pool and Northwest-South of Green River) record triple-digit spikes of nearly $1.70 and about $1.10, respectively. Otherwise, gains ranged from a little less than a nickel to nearly 60 cents.

Although the cash market had essentially neutral guidance from Thursday’s scant gain of 0.9 cent by May futures, it will have substantive support in Monday’s trading after the May natural gas contract rose 17.3 cents at least in part by latching on to the rising star of June crude oil, which soared by nearly $2.50/bbl on fresh geopolitical worries.

Rockies and San Juan Basin quotes tended to see most of the largest increases as winter-like conditions were developing in the Rockies. The Denver forecast called for a Saturday low around freezing, while the Wyoming cities of Cheyenne and Casper could expect to bottom out in the upper 20s, said Madison, WI-based Weather Central.

Saturday would be a “transition day” across the Plains and Midwest with a cold front starting to move in that could bring snow accumulations of more than a foot in western and northern Minnesota, The Weather Channel (TWC) said. High temperatures would be 10-25 degrees below average across the north-central states, it added. Chicago and Detroit, which both peaked in the upper 70s Friday, were expected to drop to highs around 60 Saturday.

The Northeast, which like the Midwest had enjoyed a fairly mild midweek, also was due to experience a return of chillier weather. And what TWC called a “strong” cold front would be pushing into the western South Saturday night and spreading eastward Sunday. However, instead of being a bullish factor as in the northern market areas, that would just tend to dampen cooling load that had been growing last week.

Citing forecasts of warmer weather in Florida over the following three days and lower linepack, Florida Gas Transmission cautioned market-area customers Friday that it may need to issue an Overage Alert Day on an upcoming gas day. The three Florida Gas production-area zones were up 15-20 cents or so, while the Florida citygate rose about a dime.

Southern Natural Gas said Friday it was “too close to call” on whether it would issue a weekend OFO against long imbalances. The pipeline said it is currently injecting into storage at 100% capacity, and based on anticipated supply and demand for the weekend, it anticipated that storage requirements during that period would “be well above injection capacity.” The injection rate at 100% capacity, however, is somewhat misleading because one of Southern’s two storage fields, the Muldon facility in Mississippi, began a shut-in test April 21 that was to continue through Monday (April 28).

A Northeast marketer said the report by Maritimes & Northeast U.S. of a production decrease Thursday at the Sable Offshore Energy production facility (see Transportation Notes) was at least partially incorrect. There was “no curtailment whatsoever at Sable,” he said. Instead, the facility was reducing sales through the weekend in order to rebuild linepack after experiencing a mechanical problem, he added.

Bidweek volatility has been quiet so far with tight ranges, the marketer went on. He quoted Friday basis of plus 73 cents for Texas Eastern M-3, plus 82 cents for the Algonquin citygate, plus 65 cents for Dracut and plus 79 cents for Tennessee Zone 6.

A utility buyer in the Lower Midwest said company throughput was rising because the next few days would be pretty chilly, with a low in the upper 30s due Saturday. However, temperatures will be warming up again into 60s by the middle of this week, he said.

The buyer said he bought “a little” May baseload at Northern Natural-demarc for index plus a penny, and that was enough to complete his bidweek trading.

The number of drilling rigs actively searching for gas in the U.S. jumped by 12 to 1,473 during the week ending April 25, according to the Baker Hughes Rotary Rig Count (https://intelligencepress.com/features/bakerhughes/). The onshore tally increased by nine, Baker Hughes said, while three rigs were added in the Gulf of Mexico. Its count was up 2% from a month earlier and 1% higher than the year-ago level.

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