Cooler weather moving into the Midwest and due to approach the Northeast over the weekend, along with a softer screen and the usual dropoff in weekend demand, pushed cash prices lower Friday. However, the downturn was fairly moderate in the East, where most points fell by less than a dime and other drops were between a dime and 15 cents.

Western declines were significantly larger. One GPI source had predicted Thursday that SoCalGas would join PG&E in declaring high-linepack OFOs for the weekend. He was half-right. SoCalGas issued an Overnominations Day notice for Saturday, and border prices slumped by more than $3 in response. That made the border lose its longtime place as the highest-priced market point to Northeast and Midwest citygates for the second weekend in a row. (“Maybe the governor should declare victory in the California price war,” a producer suggested facetiously.)

However, PG&E undoubtedly surprised at least a few shippers when it failed to extend a two-day Stage 3 OFO into Saturday, indicating on its Pipe Ranger bulletin board that linepack was expected to remain within target levels at least until today. Malin and the PG&E citygate still fell about a quarter and a half-dollar respectively, though. The California weakness was felt in the Rockies/San Juan market, where prices dropped by about 60 cents or more, and to a lesser extent in the Permian Basin. Rockies prices had lost most of the price-buoying effect from a spate of cold weather earlier in the week, one trader noted.

For an incredulous Houston-based marketer, the big story in Friday’s activity was NGPL’s Louisiana Line pool trading about a nickel above Chicago deliveries. “We can’t understand it,” he said. “Is the field that [relatively] strong or is the citygate that weak?” Certainly nobody was transporting from Louisiana to Chicago on NGPL for the weekend because the economics were all wrong, he continued. “In fact, we actually moved NGPL-Midcontinent gas to the Gulf Coast” because of a differential of about 20 cents between the Midcontinent and Louisiana Line pools.

Intra-Alberta numbers started the day flat but then fell along with the screen, a Calgary trader said.

Prices may rally a bit this week due to warmer weather returning to northern market areas, a Midcontinent marketer said, but he doesn’t expect a substantial rebound until next week, citing a Friday 11-to-15-day forecast indicating above normal to much above normal temperatures for much of the U.S. east of the Rockies. “So we’re going to get some heat in the Midcontinent, but it’s still a ways off,” he said.

The marketer reported discussing with colleagues whether any onshore production had been lost to Tropical Storm Allison-related flooding. “We suspect there might have been some in South Louisiana, but were unable to detect it for certain,” he said.

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