Hot weather remained the key to higher cash prices at nearly all points Tuesday. Most gains were fairly modest around a dime or less, but ranged higher at Texas Eastern M-3 and Algonquin citygates and were topped by an increase exceeding 40 cents at Transco Zone 6-NYC.

“It’s hot almost everywhere, and that leads to strong gas demand,” a Gulf Coast marketer said. The great majority of Tuesday’s buying was for air conditioning load, he said, as few utilities could spare much for storage injection.

The screen was off about a nickel in the afternoon after having been in mildly positive territory during morning cash trading, a Houston-based source said. “That probably won’t have any softening effect on cash as long as this heat keeps going.” Another trader thought the Nymex should have been even softer with Barry disappearing, but still leaving some cooling rains behind in the Southeast.

Several forecasts call for the heat wave to continue in northern market areas until about Friday, when moderation is due to set in. Meanwhile, excessive heat warnings were in effect Tuesday for Philadelphia, Washington and Chicago, one forecaster reported.

So far the 2001 hurricane season has been fairly weak in affecting the gas market, “but September is supposed to be the heavy month for them [hurricanes],” a marketer observed.

What used to be Tropical Storm Barry had degenerated into a low-pressure area that was bringing lessening amounts of rain to parts of the Southeast. Observers noted there was a weak tropical wave in the central Atlantic and a potentially stronger one off West Africa, but neither mattered to the market Tuesday.

Gulf Coast pipelines said no offshore shut-ins of any remaining significance remained. Sonat reported that as of 2:30 p.m. CDT Tuesday, all receipt points that had shut in due to Tropical Storm Barry had returned to service except for Main Pass 181 and Main Pass 144. Florida Gas Transmission was still under a low-linepack OFO Tuesday, but said it had been notified that the majority of offshore platforms connected to Destin Pipeline were at full operation again, so it was scheduling intraday gas up to full capacity at the Destin/FGT interconnect.

With its surge to slightly more than $4, the sizzling Transco Zone 6-NYC market replaced border-SoCalGas and PG&E citygate as the highest-priced point. PG&E gate numbers Tuesday increased their lead slightly over the border, which usually is higher. The turnabout is largely a function of SoCalGas, having drained working gas from the idle East Montebello storage field to use for core supplies over the last couple of months, starting to sell the remaining cushion gas into the general market this month, a utility spokeswoman confirmed.

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