Cash prices saw sizeable drops at all points Friday as last week’s burst of cold weather was abating in several regions. The previous day’s 33-cent loss by January futures also was a major factor in the pervasive softness, abetted to a small extent by the typical decline of industrial load over a weekend.

Transco’s Zone 6-New York pool almost prevented an across the board run of losses but slipped a couple of pennies. Other drops ranged from about a nickel to $1.10 or so, with Questar racking up the day’s biggest loss. Northeast citygates tended to hold on to their values more strongly than other market areas.

Through Thursday several points, mostly in the West, had still been sporting premiums to first-of-month indexes. But Friday’s big downturn took the entire market to index deficits, with many of them in triple digits. El Paso’s San Juan-Blanco pool had the smallest deficit of a little more than a dime.

Heating load was draining out of the South as most of its locations were due to see peak temperatures in the 50s Saturday, while Texas could expect highs in the 60s. Florida was even warmer, with predictions of mercury levels in the 70s.

The Midwest, Midcontinent and Rockies were other regions where rising temperatures were in the weekend forecast. The Chicago citygate fell more than half a dollar despite an expected Saturday low in the mid teens as the city’s high was due to rise to around freezing.

Although the Northeast was expected to be five to 15 degrees below average during the weekend, highs around 40 tended to mitigate gas load somewhat. And one source pointed out that the East region did nearly all of the withdrawals in the latest storage report, so heavy use of storage is likely continued to play a part in softening prices during a cold spell.

Regional prices may have dropped, but Northeast pipelines were warning of heavy demand periods stretching through this week and taking actions against the establishment of due-pipe imbalances. Transco already had an Imbalance OFO in place Friday.

Northern Natural Gas numbers tumbled despite the pipeline projecting a system weighted temperature of 12 degrees Saturday. The average was expected to rise to 16 Sunday and 19 Monday.

SoCalGas somewhat belatedly issued a high-linepack OFO Friday afternoon for Saturday (see Transportation Notes). Traders apparently had anticipated one as the Southern California border and SoCal citygate had fallen about 75 cents and nearly 65 cents, respectively, in that morning’s trading.

Another indication of excess western supplies came from Westcoast, which said Friday its system linepack continued to be high and “plant production is being impacted.”

A Midcontinent producer reported a “little bump higher” in prices near the end of trading, which he believed was a result of buying for storage. His own company was making some injection purchases itself, he said.

The producer said he couldn’t understand why OGT prices led the Midcontinent pack Friday when there was so much supply on the pipe and Oklahoma temperatures were rising. OGT’s line pressure has to come down sometime soon, he said, which led him to expect a big jump in Oklahoma storage withdrawals next month. He said the withdrawals will tend to displace new production rather than further pack an already stuffed pipeline.

“It just amazes me that it hasn’t gotten all that cold yet,” he said, but noted that the official start of winter is still about two weeks away, so there’s plenty of time left for very cold weather.

Despite the further screen loss of 27.5 cents Friday, the producer said Friday’s late cash price rebound and forecasts of renewed colder weather would lead to at least a modest rally Monday.

A marketer disagreed, though, saying there was “probably” no rally in the cards Monday, but by midweek cold weather should be building up enough to boost cash prices. He noted that although the overall Midwestern trend was for moderating weekend temperatures, some western sections of the region were turning a bit colder Saturday.

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