In a market practically mandated by the weather forecasts, non-Rockies prices dropped by double-digit amounts in nearly all cases Friday. A winter storm approaching the upper Rocky Mountains from Northern California and the Pacific Northwest boosted area load enough to keep most Rockies points flat to mildly lower and even raise numbers at the highly temperature-sensitive Cheyenne Hub.

But other market areas continued to put more thermometer distance between current readings and the frigid conditions of the previous week. “There’s no surprise at all that prices are falling,” said a Northeast trader quoting Transco Zone 6-NYC numbers in the low $4.00s, more than 20 cents down. “We’ve got a very mild weekend ahead,” to be followed by above normal temperatures this week.

The weekend cash softness happened in spite of a screen rebound of a little more than 7 cents Friday, although a Gulf Coast marketer reported a mild upward trend in prices as the morning proceeded. That may have been abetted by some buying for storage injections as traders took advantage of lower prices to stash a bit more gas away for the coming winter. “Big spreads” helped push injection demand, the marketer said, noting that Henry Hub cash was running nearly 20 cents behind the December screen for a while Friday morning. Another marketer also reported a few injection purchases, but said he knew of some people pulling out of storage to sell because they badly needed the cash for business purposes.

A western trader agreed that some gas was going back into storage, but said, “I’d be surprised if it was enough to result in a net injection” in the next EIA report. Withdrawal mode was more common in the West, especially with heavy pulls from Questar’s Clay Basin facility, he said. However, Jackson Prairie on the Northwest system had seen injections in the last couple of days, the trader added.

The western storm was bringing in unusual cold for early November in parts of the Pacific Northwest and Rockies, which propped up area prices somewhat, a marketer said. Also, he was hearing that 120 MMcf/d was still offline in the Jonah Field behind Opal Hub due to excess water problems, and that outage probably would last through at least the weekend.

A marketer said he was unable to find any Florida citygate market because it was hampered by fuel oil prices. “We can’t beat them at this time,” he said. He saw no price effect from the MOPS weekend outage (see Transportation Notes) on Florida Gas Transmission’s Zone 1. A lot of traders are still shunning FGT Zone 1 if possible because of so many on-again, off-again MOPS situations recently, he explained.

Monday is expected to feature light trading activity as a number of U.S. utilities take off for the Veterans Day holiday while Canadians observe Remembrance Day. “We traded all our Sumas gas through Tuesday because of the Canadian holiday,” said a western U.S. source. A Calgary marketer also reported doing Sumas deals through Tuesday, but said he would have to come in Monday to do some PG&E citygate trading. “Producers typically will take Remembrance Day off, but most marketers work,” he said, adding that temperatures would get seasonally chilly again in Alberta this week after being above normal recently.

Salomon Smith Barney analyst Kyle Cooper said his initial estimation for this week’s storage report is “for a draw somewhere near 40 Bcf. However, after [last] week’s report, our confidence level is quite low. If the increased [heating] demand does drive withdrawals even further below the model prediction, due to the increased significance of the residential and commercial sectors, then the draw may actually be as large as 50 Bcf or so. However, if last week’s relatively large withdrawal was more of a fluke and withdrawals return to something similar to the prior two weeks, the withdrawal may be in the high 20s or low 30s.”

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