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With disappearing heating load and the previous day’s screen plunge exacerbated by the extra reduction of industrial demand associated with a long holiday weekend, cash prices tanked by more than a dollar — more than $2 in quite a few cases — across the board Friday.

Canadian arctic natural gas will stay frozen off North American markets for an extra year. The first planned northern pipeline construction season has been lost to slow government and native negotiations, the Mackenzie Gas Project told regulators this week.

Trading within an extra thin 6-cent range, June natural gas futures on Friday appeared to be taking the day off to regroup. After trading just above or below Thursday’s settle for the entire session, the prompt month ended up settling at $6.343, down 1.4 cents on the day and 19.3 cents lower for the week.

Using the extra money expected to be generated by planned asset sales in Ecuador and the Gulf of Mexico this year, EnCana Corp. plans to double the size of its potential stock buyback to 10% from 5%.

While many pipelines had holiday weekend restrictions in place to deal with extra-cold weather, it was a different situation for Florida Gas Transmission. Saying market area temperatures were forecasted to be mild and linepack was higher, FGT issued an Underage Alert Day notice Thursday with 20% tolerance for positive daily imbalances.

Traders braced for what promised to be extra-cold weather developing in most of the East over the weekend by sending prices higher at all points Friday. As often happens, Northeast citygates led all advances, which ranged from a dime to more than $1.30. The smallest increases were concentrated in the West, where relatively moderate conditions will prevail in most of the region outside the Pacific Northwest until about midweek.

Rising temperatures, particularly in the Midwest and Midcontinent regions, gave an extra push Tuesday to the somewhat hesitant rally of the day before. The result was double-digit gains at almost every point Tuesday, with a majority of them surpassing 20 cents and a couple approaching 40 cents.

Kern River Gas Transmission is sending its 2003 expansion customers a little something extra in its “Thank You” notes for signing up for nearly 900 MMcf/d of new gas transportation capacity to Nevada and California markets from western Wyoming. The company said it is decreasing demand charges by 11.4% for 15-year expansion shippers and by 8.2% for 10-year expansion shippers. The proposed rate reductions reflect the lower interest rates in the final debt refinancing of the expansion, which went into service on May 1.

Kern River Gas Transmission is sending its 2003 expansion customers a little something extra in their “Thank You” notes for signing up for nearly 900 MMcf/d of new gas transportation capacity to Nevada and California markets from western Wyoming. The company said it is decreasing demand charges by 11.4% for 15-year expansion shippers and by 8.2% for 10-year expansion shippers. The proposed rate reductions reflect the lower interest rates in the final debt refinancing of the expansion, which went into service on May 1.