Last week’s overall price rally from Tuesday onward came to an end Friday as heat levels in the southern U.S. were expected to start retreating in some areas Saturday. The market also felt downward pressure from Thursday’s futures drop of 12.2 cents and the decline of industrial load that accompanies a weekend flow period.

Only gains of 11-14 cents by the two El Paso-San Juan pools, which had been among the rare points failing to rise Thursday, and essentially flat Questar and Northwest-domestic quotes avoided the pervasive softening Friday. Otherwise, losses ranged from about a nickel to about 95 cents. The biggest declines were concentrated at Northeast citygates, where temperatures were expected to keep ranging from quite comfortable to downright chilly through the weekend. The smallest declines of about a quarter or less were being reported at Rockies, Pacific Northwest, California and Western Canada points.

Most of the southern weather moderation would occur at the eastern and western ends. For example, Atlanta’s predicted Friday high in the low 90s was expected to fall nearly 10 degrees Saturday. And heavy rains described as monsoon-like were due to continue during the weekend over the Four Corners states of the Southwest, helping to dampen power generation demand in the region.

However, the forecast for the south-central region, including the Midcontinent, remained hot, hot, hot. Peak thermometer readings were expected to remain in the mid 90s through the low 100s Saturday.

Traders appear to be less concerned about a potential price crash in the next couple of months caused by full storage facilities now that a second formerly unprecedented weekly withdrawal has been reported, one source said.

For Citigroup’s Tim Evans, the latest storage data “continues to tell a bullish story in the natural gas market.” The draw a week earlier took 73 Bcf off the year-on-five-year average surplus, he pointed out. “Over the 12 weeks since May 12 the storage surplus has fallen from 722 Bcf down to 374 Bcf, and while this does leave the market with a cushion, it is a far thinner one than had been projected. Looking forward, we expect this trend to continue, with a 20-30 Bcf net injection in Thursday’s report comparing with a 62 Bcf five-year average figure.”

Temperatures were already very mild in the Pacific Northwest, said a regional utility buyer, and should get even cooler after the weekend. At this point “everybody’s thinking prices will keep going lower,” at least in the West, she added. Daily prices were moving lower in late deals, likely in sympathy with early Nymex weakness (September futures ended down 26 cents to $7.269), she noted, and both developments are indicators that cash numbers are likely to continue softening Monday.

Opal Plant capacity was still ramping up Friday following the midweek outage. The plant was sending out nearly 870 MMcf/d (volumes prior to the outage were near 1.2 Bcf/d), a spokesman for operator Williams Field Services said, and the fourth of its processing trains was expected to return to service Friday evening. Its output was enough that Kern River said linepack was high Friday at its northern end and normal in its other three segments, only a day after reporting low linepack in the two farthest upstream segments.

The Baker Hughes Rotary Rig Count (https://intelligencepress.com/features/bakerhughes/) found that last week ended with an increase of 13 rigs drilling for gas in the U.S. (including Gulf of Mexico) to 1,409. That was up 3% from a month ago and up 15% from year-earlier levels, Baker Hughes said.

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