Only a gain of about a nickel by the Florida citygate, spurred primarily by Florida Gas Transmission’s issuance of an Overage Alert Day (see Transportation Notes), and flat quotes at Westcoast Station 2 were left out of Thursday declines ranging from a little less than a nickel to about 20 cents. Despite having a major storm with plentiful snowfall due to linger through the weekend, the Northeast recorded most of the biggest losses.

In fact, it was the incorporation of weekend flows, with their accompanying fall of industrial load, in Thursday’s trading that had a lot to do with the pervading price softness. Because the March 1 month-to-month transition will occur Monday, Thursday deals covered Friday through Sunday. Friday’s trading will be for Monday-only business.

The Energy Information Administration barely exceeded consensus expectations centered around 170 Bcf when it reported a storage withdrawal of 172 Bcf for the week ending Feb. 19. April futures responded with a loss of 9.6 cents in their debut as the prompt-month contract (see related story).

Virtually all major regions of the U.S. could anticipate stormy weather going into the weekend, but most of the snowy conditions would be limited to the Northeast and Midwest, while chilly temperatures and rain would dominate in the South and Pacific Northwest.

Several Oklahoma processing plants were shut in temporarily due to a leak that occurred Thursday morning southwest of Medford, OK in a natural gas liquids (NGL) line operated by ONEOK Hydrocarbons. ONEOK spokeswoman Megan Washbourne said no injuries resulted from the leak, and its cause was under investigation. The company had begun the process of restoring service at some of the affected processing plants, she said, and will start making line repairs subject to applicable safety and regulatory requirements.

Although an Oklahoma producer said rerouting of unprocessed plant residue gas was necessary in some cases because of the shut-ins, the incident did nothing to support the intrastate market. The OGT loss of a little more than 15 cents not only was the largest in the Midcontinent but topped nearly all other drops.

Previous issues of supply tightness in the West had faded, as both Kern River and El Paso reported their respective linepack levels as having returned to normal.

A Texas-based marketer said although sub-freezing lows remained fairly plentiful in overall forecasts, it was the “weekend factor” of reduced industrial demand that resulted in Thursday’s prevalent softness. He expected mostly level numbers in Friday’s deals for Monday flow, and said they probably would continue to be near flat for the most part through next week.

The marketer said his call for the March Chicago citygate index is $5.015.

A utility buyer in the South said it was still about 10 degrees below normal in his area with no substantive warm-up in sight. At least the extension of cold winter weather into March is making it easy for his company to meet mandatory storage withdrawals. He said a colleague had informed him that the utility’s service area was experiencing its coldest winter since 2000-2001, “when prices first got to $5 or so,” and a very cold March could put it over the top for most frigid winter of the new century.

The buyer said he made no March baseload purchases because he still had a November-March term contract in effect and was required to continue pulling storage to pipeline-specified levels. Because of the cold forecasts, he expected to keep buying spot gas on an as-needed basis.

Bidweek trading on the IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) showed no clear-cut price movement patterns. For instance, ANR-Southwest slipped barely from an average of $4.73 on Monday to between $4.70 and $4.71 on both Tuesday and Wednesday, while Chicago citygates fell from just under $5.05 Monday to $4.95 Tuesday and $4.93 Wednesday. But ICE reported that Houston Ship Channel averages, after sliding from around $4.82 Monday to $4.74 Tuesday, rebounded to just shy of $4.80 Wednesday.

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