Outside of Rockies numbers plummeting by 40 cents or more, and a smaller San Juan-Blanco loss of a little more than 20 cents, the cash market held up more strongly Friday than some traders had expected. Non-Rockies/San Juan quotes ranged from flat to up nearly a dime, with gains of less than a nickel most common.

Apparently people who had anticipated weekend softening misjudged the trends toward milder weather, a marketer said. The Midwest in particular had a cold front bringing snow showers to some areas Friday and was expected to remain frigid though at least the middle of this week, he said. Warmer, but still chilly temperatures were due in the Northeast.

Cash numbers largely resisted the depressant influence of a natural gas screen that fell 6 cents, accompanied by moderate losses in the crude oil and heating oil contracts.

A marketer said it will be getting colder again in the Northeast this week, “but that won’t be terribly significant” with only two-thirds of October gone. However, he does anticipate a pickup in regional heating load from this past weekend.

Another Northeast trader said market-area spreads from the Gulf Coast were so tight that he moved only a little gas up the East Coast Friday. “If you really worked it you might have done well, but more likely you just got frustrated,” he went on. “Average temperatures on the East Coast aren’t anything to write home about. It may get a little cooler on Sunday, but for now it’s kind of bland. What we’ve got here is sweater weather, nothing more.”

“We’re happy that Florida Gas Transmission has gone two days now without an Overage Alert Day notice,” said a Florida utility buyer quoting citygates in the vicinity of $4.30, “but don’t like it that prices aren’t dropping as a result.” Not only that, she added, but field prices were going even higher in late purchases.

A marketer reported seeing enough weekend heating load in the Upper Midwest to draw a lot of gas from the Waha area, which in turn helped boost prices at that West Texas point.

A western trader said a maintenance project had been completed at Jonah Field behind the Opal (WY) Plant, so the effects of that added compression added what he estimated as about 150 MMcf/d to the Rockies market, which was also hampered by lack of takeaway capacity. “But it still baffled me why Rockies prices dropped so much” while the rest of the market was relatively firm, he added.

Saying he looks forward to colder weather this week, the trader noted that the Loveland ski resort in Colorado had already opened for the season Thursday, but “it’s with nearly all man-made snow.”

A producer said the intra-Alberta market shunned its usual screen-following tendency Friday to rise into a range from the low $5.30s to the low $5.40s. But he added, “In the long run I think prices will definitely come down significantly from where they are now, but [this] week prices could be anywhere. The market goes up, the market comes down. Will cold weather show up in 10 days? Will we top off storage? Take a position if you care; I just want to sell the gas we’ve got.”

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