A new cold front moving across the Midwest Friday promised to bring lower weekend temperatures to that region and to the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast after crossing the Appalachians. Yet the demand-boosting forecast proved no match in counteracting the negative influences of further screen softness and the lingering effect of Thursday’s report of a 100 Bcf build in storage a week earlier.

Weekend prices in both the East and the mostly moderate-weather West fell by anywhere from a little less than a dime to more than 35 cents. Declines tended to be largest in the West, with the Southern California border enduring the day’s biggest loss as numbers got hammered by issuance of an Overnominations Day notice for Saturday by SoCalGas. Northern California neighbor PG&E did not implement an OFO despite projecting that linepack would bump up against its maximum target level over the weekend.

The East also had an OFO on Sonat (see Transportation Notes) as pipelines in general coped with low demand and diminishing operational flexibility caused by rapidly filling storage facilities.

A marketer said the Gulf Coast market didn’t seem to see any impact from a Thursday-Saturday outage of Destin Pipeline (see Daily GPI, Sept. 12), probably because there wasn’t enough late-week demand for it to make a difference. But despite overall price weakness, he and a western trader both reported moderate rebounds in Friday’s late numbers.

A Northeast utility buyer wasn’t surprised by the softening, saying, “Our weather [this] week will be coolish but normal; in other words, pretty bearish.” However, another source said Midwesterners might get surprised by a new cold front that The Weather Channel is predicting to move south out of Canada around Tuesday or Wednesday, bringing the possibility of frost or a light freeze in some areas.

A producer discerned “a lot of daily volume trading, particularly for a weekend. At the [Henry] Hub there is about twice as much swing gas trading compared to last month at this time.”

Juan was upgraded to a minimal hurricane Friday with potential for more strengthening, but remained a market non-event by staying out in the mid-Atlantic Ocean as it headed northward about 155 miles east-northeast of Bermuda or about 800 miles south of Halifax, NS at 5 p.m. AST, the National Hurricane Center said. The federal agency expected Tropical Depression 16 to become a tropical storm while continuing its trek northwestward from a position about 1,290 miles east of the Lesser Antilles.

Despite some lightening of other forecasts late last week, “Late September will feel more like late October for much of the eastern half of the U.S. as cool Canadian air will send squirrels running for their acorns and the public impulsively stowing their air conditioners,” said the Weather 2000 consulting firm in a Thursday advisory. Upper atmospheric circulation patterns will cause the jet stream to buckle between two high-pressure areas, one over the Canadian/U.S. Rockies and the other over the North Atlantic, it said. The impacts “include double-digit negative anomalies across the Upper Midwest, Great Lakes and Ohio Valley, and lake-effect clouds and rain. The threat of frost is also quite prominent with overnight temperatures in the 20s in the Dakotas and Minnesota, and 30s across Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin and Michigan.”

Noting that EIA’s report of a 100 Bcf storage refill was at the exact midpoint of his forecast, Citigroup analyst Kyle Cooper said it “continues to underscore a very bearish supply/demand balance. Despite various reports that some demand in the fertilizer industry may be returning and also some rumors that some residual fuel demand was…being displaced, there was 100 Bcf of gas available for storage. We hold to a very simple thesis. Storage changes are simply the difference between supply and demand. A 100 Bcf build indicates just over 14 Bcf/d of excess supply. This is bearish. It has been bearish. Until some kind of demand arises to remove this excess supply, [screen] rallies should be sold.”

The screen’s expiration-day drop of 11.2 cents took October prices down with it, several sources agreed, although one said basis was strengthening simultaneously.

A producer said Chicago citygates started bidweek in the low $4.70s, fell to $4.61-64 Thursday, and were being done in the high $4.50s Friday “but only at very little volumes.” He anticipates a monthly index in the mid $4.60s.

A marketer reported doing basis deals Friday on Tennessee’s 500 and 800 Legs at minus 10-11 cents and at Transco Station 65 at plus 1 cent.

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