Despite a firmer screen and spreading intensification of colder weather, swing prices ranged from flat to down a little more than a nickel Tuesday. A majority of points recorded small losses of 1-3 cents.

The situation seemed ideal for continued mild upticks with the West remaining cold, a major winter storm preparing to descend southward through the Plains and Midwest states in pursuit of a cold front that had already reached Oklahoma, and another cold front poised to remind the Northeast that winter isn’t over yet, as one source summed up the market’s weather influences.

However, undoubtedly many cash traders can’t forget the spectre of looming mass storage withdrawals as the normal withdrawal season starts to near the home stretch. That bearish feeling likely was reinforced by the prospect of the year-on-year surplus starting to grow again in today’s AGA report, a marketer said. Analyst Thomas Driscoll of Lehman Brothers has lowered his takeout estimate to 95-100 Bcf, which would compare to a pull of 128 bcf a year ago.

Besides, as a Northeast trader pointed out, his market region “is just getting back to seasonal norms, where it had been 10-15 degrees above normal.”

A Rockies marketer said prices there were moving lower in late swing deals.

It had stopped snowing around Calgary after storms late last week made weekend traveling in Western Canada hazardous, but conditions were still icy, slushy and freezing, said a Calgary-based utility trader. That didn’t provide much support for prices, though, he said, because such conditions were needed more in Eastern Canada and the Northeast U.S. where most of the heating load is located.

Largely because of February futures gaining nearly a dime on their expiration day, fixed-price bidweek deals also moved higher, several traders said. One reported trading border-SoCalGas in the mid $2.00s Tuesday, following a Monday deal in the low $1.90s, but said that was something of an artificial spread because the one Monday had been lower than most that day.

Another western source quoted Malin deals bracketing the Nymex settlement at $1.99-2.01.

A Midwest/Appalachian marketer said he was only doing a small Dominion citygate deal at index for next month. Otherwise his storage accounts will handily cover virtually all February needs, he said.

A Gulf Coast producer agreed that many “people are just going on storage. We are in with the rest of the boat.” There is nothing bullish on the horizon, he continued, and lately “it is sticky in Houston…80 degrees, humid, awful. People are using their air conditioners in January. But hey, maybe more AC load is the answer we are looking for. NGI may have to switch to degree days cooling” during the winter.

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