Moderate

Prices spiked by 30-70 cents or so Tuesday even as some traders found it hard to rationalize the market’s strength. They could identify chilly weather in some regions, especially in much of the West, and even noted that much of Texas is hot enough to experience decent air conditioning load.

Buoyed by growing, albeit still rather moderate, heating load and a screen jump of more than 20 cents the day before, cash prices advanced strongly across the board Thursday. Increases ranged from 30 cents to nearly 60 cents, with the West tending to garner the lion’s share of the larger upticks.

Natural gas futures tumbled lower in moderate trading Friday on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Weak overnight trading set the stage for a sharply lower open and when the opening bell sounded, prices had already registered an 11-cent loss.

Price declines stayed rather moderate for the most part Wednesday, and heavy cooling load in much of the Southwest kept several Rockies, San Juan Basin and Southern California border points in the vicinity of flat. But outside of the western heat, the cash market was losing virtually all of its remaining vestiges of support.

Moderate softening continued to reign in the cash market Wednesday as slow warming trends fail to prompt enough power generation load to turn prices around. A few Northeast citygates were essentially flat with losses of only a penny, while most other points recorded generally small drops ranging from 2-3 cents to a little more than a dime.

Post-weekend prices bowed to weaker weather fundamentals in recording mostly moderate losses, from a mere couple of pennies to a little more than 15 cents Monday (a couple of flat to slightly higher points managed to creep into the overall mix). A solid majority of declines were in single digits.

For the cash gas market, apparently the moderate screen weakness on Wednesday trumped a small increase in hot weather Thursday. Prices for Friday flow ranged from flat or slightly higher at some points in the West to down nearly 20 cents.

Moderate softness at some points in the Midwest and West was mixed into an overall market Wednesday that was flat to a little more than a dime higher. Rainstorms in much of the East were helping to dampen hotter weather that had been increasing power generation load earlier in the week, and cooler temperatures were moving southward into the Rockies, relieving some of the cooling load in that region as well.

What some had expected to be moderate softness Friday turned into a general rout. Beset by generally light cooling load outside the southernmost U.S., recent screen weakness, a California OFO and the industrial load loss associated with a weekend, price drops ranged from a quarter to around half a dollar. The West took most of the heaviest losses.