Downright

A gradual trend toward more autumn-like temperatures (or downright wintry in a few northern areas) and modestly growing comfort levels with the restoration of Gulf Coast onshore and offshore infrastructure finally proved great enough Thursday to reverse what had been a near-solid progression of rising prices earlier in the week.

Following a week full of downright scary price swings, December natural gas futures seemed to take Friday off ahead of the Halloween weekend. December settled the day up 4.1 cents at $8.725.

Following a week full of downright scary price swings, December natural gas futures seemed to take Friday off ahead of the Halloween weekend. December settled the day up 4.1 cents at $8.725.

Summertime, and the living is downright hot–finally. Moderate to severe heat was uniform in all areas for a change Monday (even up into Canada, where a Calgary source reported afternoon temperatures in the mid 80s). The cash market responded with across-the-board gains that were mostly in the teens.

If you think it was frigid last week, it’s going to be downright”brutal” in much of the nation this week, according to a short-termweather forecast issued by Salomon Smith Barney.

Once again all of the “hot” price action Friday occurred in theNortheast, and that’s because it was downright bone-chilling there.This time it was the turn of Algonquin citygates to occupy the toprung of the pricing ladder as they ran up more than $1.00 into the$4.80s and peaked at $6.50. A large aggregator said she later heardintra-day citygates trading as high as $8. She and another sourcesaid Algonquin was curtailing all IT and 50% of Secondary Firmservice downstream of the Cromwell (CT) Compressor Station Fridayand cutting Secondary Firm to zero past Cromwell for Saturday. Thataffected all deliveries to Boston, Rhode Island and the easternhalf of Connecticut, one said.