For utilities and end-users still shell-shocked from the sky-high spikes of Monday and Tuesday, it may have seemed like re-entering a nightmare they thought they had already awakened from. Dollar-plus price gains — often plus much more than a dollar — were back in vogue Friday, as traders shrugged off the normal demand slump that accompanies a weekend and focused instead on a screen advance of more than 60 cents and prospects that this week largely will repeat the cold-weather pattern of the previous one.

Nearly all eastern points, along with the Waha/Permian Basin market, were averaging between about $10 and $16, putting a sizeable cushion between them and both end-of-February swing and first-of-month index numbers. The West also got off to a strong start in the nascent March aftermarket, although its WACOG range of about $6-9.50 trailed the East’s. Rockies quotes tended to see the smallest advances of less than a dollar.

A Gulf Coast marketer attributed Friday’s rally primarily to screen strength, saying, “There’s been no real changes in the weather forecasts, and I think the cold for early next week already was already factored into the market.” He also noted that despite the overall gains, Gulf quotes were retreating in late trading.

A producer was in basic agreement. “Prices went up most of the day, then traded off at the very end,” he said. “All I can [credit] these prices to is supply-concerned hype. Everything else should have already been taken into account the day before. The weather report looks about the same, the storage report had already come out, the wellheads are finally starting to relieve some [freeze-off] stress. On top of all of this it is the weekend, so if anything you would think prices would come down.”

But it couldn’t be denied that winter fundamentals continued to weigh on the market. Citygates in the Midwest and Northeast, where a modest amount of weather moderation Friday and Saturday was expected to be only a prelude to renewed blasts of winter fury as the weekend drew to a close, saw Friday’s biggest upticks of $5-7. The South and much of the West were rather quiet climate-wise as the week ended, but they also were likely to get another visit of chilly weather early this week.

The National Weather Service isn’t offering much relief from the cold in its predictions. In its forecast for the March 5-9 period, NWS said below normal temperatures will continue to reign in virtually all of the U.S. except for normal readings in Northern California and southwest Oregon and along a narrow strip running from southern New Mexico through South Texas and along the Gulf Coast into South Carolina. Only Florida and a sliver hugging the near-shore area of the Gulf Coast can expect above normal temperatures, according to the NWS.

There is an OFO on NGPL, a Critical Day on Nicor and ANR is restricting people to primary transport, a Midwest trader reported, “so a lot of the price move is a panic reaction.”

“It’s scary,” said a West trader of late price retrenchment. “You can’t get in and out [of the market] the way you think. Plenty of my contemporaries got stranded with gas that looked good at first, but then were forced to sell it. Prices in the Rockies dumped a buck-fifty in about 15 minutes for the weekend. It kept trading up [for a while] and we thought, ‘Here we go again.’ Then 15 minutes later it [market] was below where it started. We saw prices at $6 go up to $7, then back down to around $5.50 or so.”

The week-ending swing strength apparently had its effect on late bidweek deals. A Calgary source who had quoted the Southern California border around $7.30 earlier in the week was quoting it about a dollar higher Friday. “Things are strong all over, and it’s still freezing around Calgary,” he said.

Another source concurred: “The low point of bidweek came yesterday [Thursday] when Henry Hub was about $8.20 and Chicago looked to be maybe in the $8.50-90 range, but sellers perceived that the index would wind up being much higher, so there weren’t really any offers at those levels.”

“The bidweek market was just too volatile for me,” said a Southwest trader. “I thought about making a move, but kept hesitating. I was worried I might get eaten alive in there!” He went on to observe, “Each month this winter the market has been more and more illiquid. Credit has been such an issue that people are only doing what they need to do. No third-party trades, just send it though and go home.

“We had some serious problems with our wellheads frozen in Texas. For a while there it was looking really ugly, now the situation is less dire. March may look cold for some, but Texas is going to warm up to the 60s, which will be enough to thaw everything out.”

Despite recent market problems, a western marketer found some reason for a sanguine viewpoint: “We are a service company and we do a lot of working with customers to meet their needs, so this market really plays into our hands. Some would say that liquidity is down, and from their perspective they are right. There is less trading going on. But in its place there has been a resurgence in what I call ‘true marketing.’ There is less room for third parties now, so you are not seeing gas trade hands again and again and again before reaching the market. Now it’s wellhead to pipe to burn. We are lucky because that is something we do very well.”

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