Except for a major turnaround of previously slumping Rockies prices, Wednesday’s cash market was close to a repeat of Tuesday: flat to a few cents higher at nearly all non-Rockies points. The Midcontinent saw most of the larger non-Rockies increases around 4-8 cents because of snowy conditions returning to its Midwest market area.

As the only other region besides the Midwest with significant cold weather, Rockies/Pacific Northwest/Western Canada points recorded gains ranging from about a dime to a little more than 30 cents. In the process they tended to recover more price ground than had been lost the day before. A Rockies aggregator admitted being “a little shocked myself at Opal coming back up so strongly” when a Muddy Creek outage on Kern River was due to continue through today, denying Opal Plant tailgate gas an outlet into Kern River. However, he noted that plant maintenance this week already was keeping an estimated 300 MMcf/d off the Rockies market, and tie-in work at Jonah Field behind the plant would increase the curtailment by about another 300-350 MMcf/d today only. He credited the large supply shortfall for igniting the Rockies rally.

A Calgary source said it was still below freezing in Alberta, which prompted provincial prices to rise nearly C15 cents to C$4.10.

Wednesday’s only significant decline of about a nickel occurred at Florida citygates. “There’s just not enough demand in the warm state to spur demand at the gate lately,” a utility buyer said. The buyer said it would be nice to use the company’s FT on Florida Gas Transmission to buy field gas and try to make some profit by selling at the citygate, “but nobody is asking for delivered gas.”

A marketer said Chicago citygates traded much the same as the day before: starting out strongly, falling back a bit at mid-morning and then rebounding. He and other traders remarked on how tight price ranges were Wednesday.

Once again several cash traders expressed puzzlement at the screen reaction to a storage report. AGA said 140 Bcf was withdrawn last week, a volume that was at the high end of previous expectations. Nymex, which had wavered slightly to either side of flat during morning cash activity, took the report and ran — downhill, eventually settling for a daily loss of nearly 15 cents.

An eastern LDC buyer commented, “Last week there was a smaller withdrawal [132 Bcf] that met expectations and Nymex runs up; today it was a larger one [withdrawal] above expectations and Nymex dives. What is the deal here, anyway? A customer told me he’s given up on trying to figure out why the screen does what it does.” Another source said he had to assume that futures traders thought the recent run-up had gotten overblown and were beginning to consolidate prices. But he added, “To me, this late in the withdrawal season, who cares what Nymex does in response to an AGA report?”

A marketer said the report had appeared bullish to him and colleagues, but the subsequent futures drop likely would have a softening effect on the cash market today.

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