Nearly all points continued to climb Wednesday as winter weather began to pay a return visit to northern market areas and parts of the West. However, widespread late price retreats and expectations of the demand slump that typically accompanies a long weekend had sources anticipating softness Thursday.

Advances tended to range from about a nickel to more than 60 cents at Transco Zone 6-NYC, with those of 10-20 cents being most prevalent. The screen, which had been cited as a factor in Tuesday’s cash strength, was a non-player Wednesday, trading mildly in the red before finally eking out a small gain for the day.

The conspicuous exception to overall firming was in San Juan Basin, which plunged about half a dollar to the $4.20 area. A marketer explained that El Paso’s one-day maintenance constraint at Bondad Station Wednesday had created something of an artificial blip in Tuesday’s San Juan numbers by reducing available supply, noting that the San Juan-Permian spread of less than 30 cents that day was the tightest she had seen for a long while. But with the work ending Thursday, extra supply came back on the market and the San Juan market essentially “came back to normal,” the marketer said.

Zone 6-NYC and Texas Eastern M-3 led the price run-ups as a never-say-die winter invaded the Northeast once again. However, a utility buyer said his service area was expecting lows in 30s and highs in the 50s Thursday, “so it’s not ridiculously cold and certainly not out of line with seasonal weather. I’ve seen both snow and 95 degrees before in the Northeast during April.” Area LDCs were expecting sendouts for Thursday to be about three times normal for the date, he added.

The buyer continued that some storage withdrawals likely would occur Thursday and Friday, but the volumes weren’t expected to be major. “I don’t think it will kill expectations for injection report next week,” he said. Milder weather — “about where it ought to be” — should return for the weekend, he said.

A Midwest utility buyer was a bit perplexed about major falloffs in late prices despite wintry precipitation predicted for Thursday in the region’s northern portion, although she welcomed them. NGPL Midcontinent fell from the mid $5.30s to around $5.10 at the end, she said. Much like the Northeast source, her company anticipated taking “a little bit out of storage” while the cold spell lasts, but planned to buy new gas rather than reduce its storage inventory to any great extent. “Northern Natural at demarc and Ventura has been a really good buy for us lately,” the buyer added.

“Everything dropped drastically near the end,” commented a Midcontinent/Southwest trader. Cold weather forecasts prompted the average upticks, she said, but but buying dried up after people finally decided there wouldn’t be enough cold in the market area to justify even higher prices.

Buying was really light on Florida Gas Transmission due to the mild market-area weather, a producer said. He sees a “good chance” of MOPS curtailments during a pigging operation at the start of next week, but said it shouldn’t matter much to the market. It’s a good time for MOPS to pig in this low-demand period, he said.

Virtually all of Thursday’s trading will be for flow through Monday due to most sources following Nymex’s example of taking Good Friday off. One eastern utility staffer said he and colleagues would be in the office Friday “but not very active.” They planned to trade through Monday on Thursday like everyone else.

©Copyright 2003 Intelligence Press Inc. All rights reserved. The preceding news report may not be republished or redistributed, in whole or in part, in any form, without prior written consent of Intelligence Press, Inc.