As some sources had suspected, the recent buildup in air conditioning load wasn’t strong enough to sustain this week’s bull market in the wake of another big storage injection report and associated screen softness. Only small to moderate Rockies/San Juan increases went against the grain of overall market declines Thursday that were mostly between a dime and 30 cents but got as big as nearly $1.50 for California border deliveries into SoCalGas.

“I think we’re entering a wait-and-see market phase for now,” said a Northeast trader. Prices are teetering between the conflicting influences of fairly strong power generation load as opposed to mild storage buying and weaker futures, he said. Obviously the teeter-totter was leaning more in the bears’ direction Thursday, he added.

The Northeast trader and others were in agreement that prices will continue to fall at least through the weekend. That was accented by a tendency of many eastern points to fall by a dime or more from their early Thursday highs. The National Weather Service offered little encouragement for bulls, saying that only the Southeast quadrant of the U.S. is like to experience above normal temperatures for much of next week.

A high-linepack OFO extension by PG&E helped dampen California demand again, and border-SoCalGas numbers, which had been a bastion of Golden State price strength earlier in the week, turned in Thursday’s biggest drop by far. No OFO was declared by SoCalGas, a western marketer said, “but I’m almost certain it will join PG&E in issuing them [OFOs] for the weekend.”

Another marketer lamented that the OFO kept prices into PG&E at Daggett so low that she was unable to cover the transportation spread between Opal and Daggett. A bit of lingering cold weather allowed Rockies pipes to defy the general softness, she said. Also, San Juan numbers likely got a boost as traders packed the pipe in anticipation of El Paso maintenance that will result in basin capacity cuts ranging from 220 MMcf/d to 500 MMcf/d starting Saturday and running through next week, the marketer said.

Looking ahead to July, one trader quoted basis of plus $3.20 for border-SoCalGas, which was yielding fixed prices of $7.20-30.

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