It hadn’t reached the southern tier of states or Mid-Atlantic quite yet, but wintry conditions or a reasonable facsimile dominated the weather picture Wednesday and forecasts for the next few days in the rest of the U.S. and Canada. The cash market responded with major gains that were as small as 15-30 cents in most of the West but hit 35-70 cents or so throughout the East.

Sources don’t think the ascent has ended yet, either. While not expecting spikes as large as Wednesday’s to continue, they did say the combination of price muscle-flexing throughout the energy futures complex and the continuing spread of colder weather should keep cash on the rise through at least Thursday.

Another hint of more price hikes Thursday came from a trader’s report of late run-ups again Wednesday. Her first ANR Southwest package in the high $4.40s yielded to later ones in the low $4.60s.

A Gulf Coast marketer said he hadn’t heard of any shut-ins resulting from a weak low-pressure system that went ashore late Tuesday night from the central Gulf of Mexico. The low was centered along the southern Mississippi/Alabama border Wednesday afternoon, according to The Weather Channel, which added, “Only widely scattered showers are associated with this barely definable low.” The system’s winds had been peaking at only 35 mph, the marketer noted, so platform operators should have been able to ride it out without any trouble.

A Northeast utility buyer said a cold front had not reached her company’s service area yet, so she had no deals to report for Thursday flow, “but we’re due to get some cold weather by Friday.” She hoped to be able to nominate some due-customer pipeline imbalances at that time in lieu of buying new gas, but was wary. Several Northeast pipes have said recently they’ve got too much gas on their systems and thus were rejecting due-pipeline imbalance make-ups, the buyer noted. “We’re afraid that when the weather switches,” the pipelines will convert those bans to due-shipper make-ups when shippers like her need it most. Tennessee is most notorious for stuff like that because ” they’re not very customer-oriented, she said.

Tennessee still had a Critical Day 1 OFO Alert (see Daily GPI, Nov. 4) in effect until further notice late Wednesday afternoon, while Transco, Texas Eastern and Algonquin also maintained restrictions against excess linepack. On the other hand, Florida Gas Transmission notified market-area customers that it might issue an Overage Alert Day notice for Thursday “to ensure that FGT’s linepack does not drop to low levels.”

A Dallas-area source said it was “getting kind of cool” there Wednesday afternoon and that a front moving through southern Oklahoma would probably be arriving overnight. She and a Houston-based marketer agreed that the front was likely to erase most of the air conditioning load in Texas by Friday but would replace some of it with heating load.

Taking note of Wednesday’s great strength in cash and petroleum-related energy futures (crude oil for December shot up more than a dollar to surpass $30/bbl, while the heating oil and unleaded gasoline at New York Harbor contracts also spiked), a source commented, “The market sure looks powerful today, but will it last?” He explained his uncertainty as due to the fact that “there seems to be a winter weather forecast for every possible scenario, so how do you know which one is right?”

The Rockies, Pacific Northwest and California markets saw most of Wednesday’s upticks of less than 30 cents despite potentially record-breaking lows anticipated Thursday in the northern Rockies and Upper Plains. “Highs are forecast to range from the 20s in Montana and much of Wyoming (teens in isolated spots) to the 70s in the desert Southwest,” The Weather Channel said.

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