Prices got weaker Wednesday as losses expanded into double digits across the board. The general lack of weather-based load continued to weigh on the cash market, and that was exacerbated by the 22.5-cent loss by June futures a day earlier.

Prospects for a rally anytime soon are slim to none as holiday weekend transport restrictions due to forecasts of mild weather were being signaled by several pipeline bulletin board postings.

Wednesday’s losses were fairly consistent across geographic areas, but tending to be a bit higher in the Rockies and California, in ranging from about 15 cents to C35 cents or so.

Thursday’s cash market will see a modest amount of prior-day screen support after the June futures contract rebounded by 5.6 cents Wednesday (see related story), but that is not expected to offset the continuing bearishness of weather fundamentals.

A high-inventory OFO by PG&E resulted in losses of about a quarter each at Malin and the PG&E citygate.

Although it was able to defy weak weather-based demand with higher prices during most of the previous two weeks, the cash market is now finding that the laws of price gravity cannot be ignored forever. Air conditioning load across the South remains relatively marginal for late May, and while some parts of the Northeast are getting as warm or even warmer than the South, the impact on cooling demand tends to be considerably less in the northern market area.

Cooling trends were forecast for Thursday in the western Midwest and Rockies, but they would take those regions merely to moderate and chilly, respectively.

Several pipeline bulletin boards were warning of mild market-area forecasts over the Memorial Day weekend. All of the Spectra Energy pipes (Texas Eastern, Algonquin, Maritimes & Northeast and East Tennessee) along with Transco and Southern were notifying customers about actual or potential scheduling restrictions that basically concerned avoidance of creating due-shipper imbalances. Southern said it is not accepting interruptible storage injection nominations, which Questar had said a day earlier it will suspend beginning June 1 (see Daily GPI, May 20).

Kern River reported low linepack Wednesday in the three farthest downstream of its four system segments. On the other hand, Westcoast said it was experiencing “extremely high linepack” in its Mainline North segment but merely “high linepack” in the Mainline Central and Mainline South segments. Linepack is expected to continue to rise, Westcoast said.

A marketer in the Upper Midwest indicated the lack of either heating or cooling load in the region, saying the forecast was for “great weather” at a younger relative’s soccer game that she planned to attend Wednesday night. Early-morning frosts had occurred as recently as a couple of mornings earlier in the week, but prospects are mostly mild for the foreseeable future, she said. She reported hearing a couple of forecasts for a cool Midwest summer, which she said would be quite agreeable to her.

Stephen Smith of Stephen Smith Energy Associates changed his projection for the storage injection during the week ending May 15 to 92 Bcf from a previous estimate of 100 Bcf. The revision was “due to a mechanical error, not revisions in source data,” Smith said.

©Copyright 2009Intelligence Press Inc. All rights reserved. The preceding news reportmay not be republished or redistributed, in whole or in part, in anyform, without prior written consent of Intelligence Press, Inc.