San Juan Basin and Rockies prices continued to disobey the overall laws of market gravity Thursday, managing double-digit gains of nearly 40 cents while other points ranged from flat to down about 15 cents. The softening was remarkably consistent as nearly all the losses were clustered within 2 cents on either side of a dime.

Opinion was mixed on Friday’s price direction. One source cited the usual demand slump over a weekend, high storage levels and bearish weather outlooks in many regions as reasons to expect further price declines. However, others pointed to the screen’s bullish reaction to the morning storage report (up nearly 8 cents after EIA reported injections of 74 Bcf last week) and what was likely to develop into Tropical Storm Hanna in the Gulf of Mexico as potential cash price boosters.

Tropical Depression Nine was about 250 miles south of Pensacola, FL as of 4 p.m. CDT Thursday, according to the National Weather Service. It was “meandering” without moving very far for much of Thursday, NWS said, but was likely to reach named tropical storm status by the time it is expected to begin moving northward Friday.

New York City-based Weather 2000, calling the NWS’ National Hurricane Center (NHC) forecast for TD Nine “plain vanilla,” said in an advisory to clients that it had greater concerns about the storm potential. “If this system does not move that far north (either being stationary or having a reduced northern component to its vector of motion), it has more time to sit over very warm Gulf waters and strengthen. If soon-to-be Hanna moves due northward and crosses the Florida Panhandle late on Friday as the NHC predicts, then 50 mph sustained winds might be this storm’s limit. But if Hanna does not hit land (for whatever reason) until Saturday evening or beyond, the better chances it has to reach 55-85 mph sustained winds.

“The second and more alarming concern is the potential we are seeing for westward motion. The official NHC track has the system moving conclusively north, hitting land just east of Pensacola, Florida. However, we believe a path west of this should be given. Locations in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and even the Texas coast should be very cautious.”

The Minerals Management Service office in New Orleans did not return a call asking about any production shut-in reports from the Mobile Bay area. However, a knowledgeable source said Thursday afternoon he doubted there were any shut-ins “at this point.” Usually it’s a 3-4 day process to evacuate platform personnel when operators can see a storm coming from a long way off, and this one sprang up quickly, much like Fay had last week. The 35 mph winds that TD Nine was sporting at that time is “not enough to threaten production,” he said. Besides, Mobile Bay has some of the newest and most automated platforms in the Gulf, he noted. They can evacuate workers and still leave the pumps running at many Mobile Bay facilities, which isn’t feasible at the much older platforms in other parts of the Gulf. In addition, most Mobile Bay gas is not associated with oil production, the source said. Associated gas would be dependent on the requirement of keeping oil-producing platforms manned to maintain operations.

Analyst Kyle Cooper with Salomon Smith Barney attributed most of the gas futures advance to the tropical depression and “various rumors about possible nuclear plant problems,” which he dismissed as seeming “to just be recycled stories regarding planned maintenance.” He saw little chance of TD Nine affecting production, but thought an area of depression in the southern Gulf near Mexico’s Bay of Campeche bore watching because it could have an impact over the weekend.

Florida citygates fell nearly a dime but remained the market’s most expensive gas. Florida Gas Transmission kept an Overage Alert Day notice in place but further loosened the negative imbalance tolerance to 20%. A utility buyer noted that had been “a real long time” since an FGT notice had 20% tolerance. Shippers probably wish they’d just lift the OAD, “but 20% gives us a lot of cushion.”

“What’s keeping Rockies prices going up? Good question,” said a western marketer, adding that he thought ongoing pipeline maintenance in San Juan basin should have kept a lid on them. Although some quotes were still under a dollar, all Rockies points were averaging on the plus side of a dollar Thursday. The source said he had heard reports that a couple of companies in the region were running short on supplies and had long-term contracts to fulfill, so their bids were boosting overall prices. “That’s our guess, anyway.”

Another trader said apparently the Jonah Field production problem behind Opal Plant (see Daily GPI, Sept. 12) was serious enough to take a sizeable amount of supply off market, although he hadn’t heard any estimates other than Kern River’s 65 MMcf/d shortfall, which wasn’t updated Thursday.

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