Severe

On the verge of a long holiday weekend that would feature severe winter cold in nearly all areas, prices made substantive gains across the board Friday. Transco’s Zone 6-New York City pool saw quotes run as high as $27 and recorded an average increase of more than $11 as multi-dollar spikes at Northeast citygates led the cash market uprising.

Prices dropped at nearly all points Wednesday as a Thursday return of especially severe winter weather that had been anticipated when the week began apparently was encountering delays. Tuesday’s 15.7-cent decline by February futures also contributed to cash market softness. Expectations that a relatively light storage pull will be reported for last week may have been another factor, one source said.

With a severe ice storm continuing to wreak havoc on power systems in the central U.S. and frigid temperatures remaining in the Wednesday forecast in Canada and from the Rockies and Midcontinent through the Midwest and Northeast, prices continued to rise at a large majority of points Tuesday.

Spectra Energy, Duke Energy’s natural gas spin-off, is on target to spend more than a billion dollars on key growth projects this year, part of a three-year, $3 billion capital expenditure program designed to spur 5-7% annual earnings growth through 2009, CEO Fred J. Fowler said during the company’s first quarter earnings conference call last week.

Spectra Energy, Duke Energy’s natural gas spin-off, is on target to spend more than a billion dollars on key growth projects this year, part of a three-year, $3 billion capital expenditure program designed to spur 5-7% annual earnings growth through 2009, CEO Fred J. Fowler said during the company’s first quarter earnings conference call Tuesday.

Spectra Energy, Duke Energy’s natural gas spin-off, is on target to spend more than a billion dollars on key growth projects this year, part of a three-year, $3 billion capital expenditure program designed to spur 5-7% annual earnings growth through 2009, CEO Fred J. Fowler said during the company’s first quarter earnings conference call Tuesday.

No severe late-season blast of winter is due, but temperatures are dipping low enough in northern market areas to give a boost to recently flagging heating load for gas. The cash market responded with moderate increases at nearly all points Wednesday.

The onslaught of what is developing into the most severe winter weather of the 2006-07 season so far in key market areas, eclipsing even the January blizzards, trumped the previous day’s 60.1-cent plunge in March futures as chief cash market influence Tuesday. The result was rising prices at nearly all points, led by triple-digit spikes at several Northeast citygates.

With futures guidance having turned neutral Tuesday, spreading cold weather not yet getting very severe, and something of a feeling that the cash market spikes of the previous two days might have been overly exuberant, prices fell at most points Wednesday.