The big price run-ups for the last two days of September that had dazzled (and befuddled in many cases) cash traders failed to survive the month-to-month transition, for the most part. In Thursday’s highly volatile trading for the initial October aftermarket, a few scattered points ranged from flat to slightly higher or lower, while Henry Hub and Texas Eastern M-2 were conspicuous with their gains of nearly 15 cents and 20 cents respectively.

But for the majority of the market, the price direction was decidedly downward. Amid price ranges that were often much wider than usual, losses ranged from around a nickel to nearly 70 cents. There was little consistency in geographic trends, with some market areas containing a mix of higher, moderately lower and much lower points.

For some, it was merely a case of the market moving past a highly positive price aberration and returning to the softness that was appropriate for mostly negative fundamental factors. The gas buyer for a Texas electric utility was among them, saying he didn’t know of anybody who expected the big price spikes that had spanned Tuesday and Wednesday, “but now the market seems to be going in the direction we want again. I hope it continues.” He went on to note that it “wasn’t much of a summer” for electric utilities in Texas. Temperatures were at normal high levels only now and then, “and now we’re entering October,” which is generally considered the state’s best month for weather that the Chamber of Commerce can brag about, he said.

So much for the “next-day magic” that a screen spike usually works on the following day’s cash market. “I guess October [cash] just can’t keep up with the November futures contract,” said a Northeast marketer. Prices looked like they might be strong at first, she said, but then started falling quickly and kept going even further down in late deals done after the storage report came out. On the hypervolatility at many points — such as Henry Hub’s range of more than $1.10 from top to bottom, which produced the biggest average uptick of the day while most Gulf Coast points fell substantially — the marketer commented that when prices are moving so much, a large deal or two near either extreme may be able to skew the average somewhat.

The Northeast was still getting the remnants of Hurricane Jeanne, so it was overcast Thursday in her city “and we’re still not getting that fine weather we’ve been promised in the last couple of days,” she noted. She said she would have to believe that with the screen’s dime-plus retreat, continuing bearish outlooks on weather and storage, and the usual weekend effect of reduced industrial load, prices will again get softer Friday.

While the Northeast can expect to get its delayed dose of nice weather Friday, it and the other primary regions of the U.S. can expect cool to chilly weekends because of multiple cold fronts, according to The Weather Channel.

The Energy Information Administration said 69 Bcf was injected into storage last week. The injection volume was near the low end of the range of analysts’ prior estimations and reduced the 2004 surplus to both the year-ago and five-year average levels, but nevertheless had to be considered bearish because of some traders’ anticipation that lingering Gulf of Mexico shut-ins would have more impact in suppressing the refill pace, one source said.

Shippers on PG&E’s California system got only one day of respite from a high-inventory OFO with zero tolerance for positive imbalances; a new one was declared for Friday (see Transportation Notes).

Progress in returning shut-in offshore gas wells to production was almost imperceptible. With 22 companies reporting to it by 11:30 a.m. CDT, Minerals Management Service said 2,321.26 MMcf/d remained offline Thursday — only 0.7 MMcf/d less than Wednesday’s posting of 2,321.96 MMcf/d. The cumulative total of shut-in gas since Sept. 11 (MMS previously had been using a Sept. 13 start date) reached 57.86 Bcf, or 1.3% of the Gulf of Mexico’s approximate annual output of 4.45 Tcf. Evacuations still stood at 39 platforms and two mobile drilling rigs, MMS said.

Atlantic tropical activity is subdued for now. Tropical Storm Lisa is the only named system remaining, and it was expected to fade soon as it moved northward in the middle of the ocean Thursday. But closer to home, The Weather Channel noted that “a tropical wave in conjunction with an upper-level disturbance is heading from the central Caribbean into the western Caribbean and some development is possible over the next few days.”

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