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Sabine Pass Liquefaction LLC made “significant progress” on its liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal project in 2011, but that wasn’t enough to keep red ink from marring Cheniere Energy Inc.’s bottom line, the company said Friday.

It wasn’t surprising to see a majority of points softening again Friday as weather continued to be milder than in most winters and the weekend was taking a bite out of industrial demand. What may have been a bit surprising to some was that quite a few locations were flat or managed to rack up small gains to keep mixed price movement in play.

Hot weather wasn’t much of a factor in Wednesday’s market as forecast peaks in the mid 90s or higher remain confined to parts of South Texas, the desert Southwest and inland California. Otherwise moderate to cool or chilly conditions dominate the rest of the North American outlook.

It wasn’t as bad as it might have been. That was the most optimistic assessment of Hurricane Irene’s (gradually being downgraded) weekend cruise along the Atlantic Seaboard. Most points continued to weaken a bit Monday as the impact of lost power generation load along the East Coast was being felt, but residual pockets of high heat resulted in quite a few flat to higher numbers.

It wasn’t the overload of Marcellus Shale supplies, but poor planning by Columbia Gas Transmission LLC that “may have created or contributed” to the storage constraints on its system in northern Ohio, Indicated Shippers said in a protest to the pipeline request for a tariff increase.

It wasn’t the overload of Marcellus Shale supplies, but poor planning by Columbia Gas Transmission LLC that “may have created or contributed” to the storage constraints on its system in northern Ohio, Indicated Shippers said in a protest to the pipeline request for a tariff increase.

It wasn’t a complete upturn, but the hints in the previous day’s market that a lessening of overall weakness might lead to a general rally Thursday came to fruition. Abetted by the May futures increase of 9.2 cents Wednesday and a rather slow easing of cold weather in much of the northern U.S. and Canada, a mixed market saw gains outnumbering losses.

Except for an enclave of still-rising points in the New England market, the latest cold spell wasn’t any more successful in sustaining a price rally than others in recent weeks have been. Modest warming trends in the Midwest and lower Northeast/Mid-Atlantic, along with a plunge of 20.6 cents by December futures a day earlier, pushed a large majority of points lower by double-digit amounts Tuesday.

Activity in the Marcellus Shale hasn’t declined even in the face of weak natural gas prices, a Williams Cos. executive said Thursday.