With temperatures below freezing from the Rockies into Western Canada and a snowstorm in much of the Rockies being supplemented by 30s lows in much of the Midwest and falling mercury in the Northeast, it was hardly surprising to see cash prices extend their gains Wednesday. The previous day’s futures gain of 5.4 cents also was a bullish factor.

Except for several scattered instances of flat quotes, increases ranged from 2-3 cents to about 45 cents. Most of the double-digit upticks were recorded in the Northeast, while despite the frigid Rockies conditions western markets saw most of the smallest gains.

The cash market lost its prior-day screen support, with prompt-month futures dropping 6.8 cents on the eve of expiration (see related story).

One source expressed a bit of puzzlement at the Northeast price strength, noting that only a few sections of New England were seeing sub-freezing lows, and more heavily populated areas to the south such as New York City and Philadelphia were bottoming out around 40 or a little higher.

Other than its reverting to Category One status instead of strengthening into a major hurricane (Category Three or greater) as expected, there was essentially nothing new about Rina Wednesday other than that she was getting closer to the northeast tip of the Yucatan Peninsula. Strong wind shears in the Gulf of Mexico were still expected to steer Rina to the northeast over western Cuba and the Florida Keys. A surface trough in the central Caribbean Sea had its chances of tropical cyclone development downgraded from 20% Tuesday to 10%.

Although the South can anticipate one more day of relatively moderate highs in the 70s and 80s, it will be joining most of the rest of the market in having considerably chillier temperatures moving in around Friday.

A Rockies producer said although the Denver area was due to chill out to around 20 overnight Wednesday, the storm dumping up to a foot of snow in parts of his region was “real wet and melting fast.” He compared it more to a quick-hitting spring storm instead of the more severe ones that tend to occur in winter. Denver is expected to be hitting 60 degrees or so by the weekend, so he thought the week’s cash rally was likely to fade out in the next day or two.

The producer noted that some of the biggest cold-weather demand currently is occurring in the Dawn Hub area of Canada’s Ontario province, and that Dawn prices recently have been surpassing New York citygates.

Likely influenced by futures weakness Wednesday, November baseload prices tended to fall a few cents from Tuesday’s initial bidweek levels, IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) reported. Its Southern California border average of about $3.57 Wednesday was down about 3 cents from the day before, while MichCon citygates fell about 4 cents from a $3.91 average on Tuesday, ICE said.

Stefan Revielle of Credit Suisse projects an 89 Bcf storage injection for the week ending Oct. 21. Citi Futures Perspective analyst Tim Evans anticipates a lower build of 82 Bcf, to be followed by ones of 48 Bcf and 21 Bcf for the weeks ending Oct. 28 and Nov. 4, respectively, with the season’s first withdrawal of 16 Bcf to occur during the week ending Nov. 11.

Bentek Energy’s U.S. Natural Gas Hub Flows chart found lower volumes being nominated for Wednesday at 10 of the 23 trading points it covers. However, the declines were mostly small, with only Northern Natural-Ventura’s drop of 121,000 MMBtu (down 11%) exceeding 100,000 MMBtu, and five other locations were essentially flat. Four points recorded big volume gains: the Chicago citygate, up 299,000 MMBtu (12%); Northern Natural-demarc, up 220,000 MMBtu (23%); the Florida citygate, up 148,000 MMBtu (5%); and Texas Eastern M-3, up 122,000 MMBtu (6%).

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