The futures market began the week Tuesday in the same fashion itclosed out last week – probing higher amid a technical bouncesupported by continued apprehension about tropical storm activity.That enabled the October contract to post a gain for its third dayin a row by advancing 9.1 cents to $1.874.

A New York broker pointed to buying by commercial traders whowere aggressively covering shorts on reports of another stormbrewing in the Gulf of Mexico. By the afternoon the NWS had issueda tropical storm warning along the Texas coast from High Island toBrownsville. As of 4 PM CDT the tropical depression was located 220miles southeast of Corpus Christi, Texas and was expected to reachtropical storm status today.

Looking ahead to the release of the AGA storage report thisafternoon, the Pegasus Econometric Group is looking for aninjection in the 60-80 Bcf range which would fall short of the 96Bcf recorded for the same week in 1997. “Longer term though, the460 Bcf year-on-year storage surplus remains a drag on the marketand we still see storage reaching capacity weeks ahead of thetypical start of net withdrawals,” the group said in their NaturalGas Report dated September 8.

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