Weekend

Prices continued to soar at Northeast citygates Thursday as a major winter storm was targeting that region and the Mid-Atlantic going into the weekend. But with temperatures remaining merely cold in the Midwest and still refusing to go below freezing in the South and much of the West outside the Rockies, the rest of the market was flat to moderately lower.

Prices continued to soar at Northeast citygates Thursday as a major winter storm was targeting that region and the Mid-Atlantic going into the weekend. But with temperatures remaining merely cold in the Midwest and still refusing to go below freezing in the South and much of the West outside the Rockies, the rest of the market was flat to moderately lower.

Despite an expected warm-up in the eastern half of the country by the end of this coming weekend, the natural gas futures market staged a partial rebound on Tuesday as some market watchers were expecting last week’s frigid cold to translate into a storage draw of 200-300 Bcf in Thursday’s report.

February natural gas futures released 29.5 cents of weather premium on Monday as reports forecast a warm-up to arrive late this weekend into next week. After recording a new high for the bull move of $6.108 just four days ago, the prompt-month contract closed Monday’s regular session at $5.454.

With portions of the Northeast still digging out from a weekend blizzard and another large winter storm looming over the Upper Midwest, Andover, MA-based WSI Corp. released a forecast on Monday — the first official day of winter — calling for temperatures across almost all of the country to average cooler than normal from January to March.

The first taste of cold and snow in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions this past weekend combined with another cold front on Monday in the West to help give natural gas futures bulls some traction as the January contract shot 38.5 cents higher on Monday to close at $4.971.

Due to forecasts of mild Southeast weather, Southern Natural Gas cited projections of high storage injection requirements during the weekend in announcing that an OFO Type 6 for long imbalances would be in effect on its system Saturday until further notice. Tiered imbalance penalties will be assessed to shippers exceeding allocated deliveries by 2% or more (those with long imbalances of less than 2% or 200 Dth/d will not be penalized).

Natural gas traders were unimpressed with the weekend arrival of Tropical Storm Ida in the Gulf of Mexico and it showed in trading on Monday as the December contract traded back and forth during the day before closing the regular session at $4.670, up 7.5 cents from Friday’s finish.

Citing “historically high storage inventory levels and projected high injection requirements for the upcoming weekend,” Southern Natural Gas said Friday it was implementing an OFO Type 6 for long imbalances Saturday until further notice (although it said in another notice that the OFO was unlikely to continue Monday). Tiered imbalance penalties were set for positive imbalances exceeding 2%, or 200 Dth, whichever was greater.