The cash market recorded a very mild rally Monday in which a few points managed gains in the teens, while the majority ranged from barely lower to a dime higher. Intra-Alberta saw the only significant decline of nearly C10 cents.

With fundamental weather support remaining light in the East and diminishing in the West, a Midcontinent/Midwest marketer said he could attribute Monday’s upticks only to “playing catch-up” with the screen gain of nearly a dime Friday and returning industrial load following the weekend. A smidgen of “storm hype” may have been involved because Tropical Storm Earl was still viable during morning trading before fizzling that afternoon, he said.

However, the marketer doesn’t see any more near-term rallies before September, if not beyond then. Forecasts increasingly indicate that the bearishly cool weather being seen in the East at mid-month will last through bidweek, and without any new storms approaching the Gulf of Mexico, prices should fall for the rest of the month, he said. Confessing to having been a market bear for a long time, he is “amazed that prices are still as high as they are.” He doesn’t foresee any fast slide in prices, but rather “a slow, steady grind downward through [the September screen] settlement.”

What had been Tropical Depression Five became Tropical Storm Earl over the weekend, but by Monday afternoon it had degenerated into an open tropical wave in the central Caribbean Sea, said the National Hurricane Center (NHC). Unless regeneration occurs, the agency did not plan any further advisories on Earl.

Earl had been the closest to a potential disruption of offshore production Monday. The other system being monitored, Hurricane Danielle (formerly Tropical Depression Four), was still far out in the Atlantic about 995 miles west-northwest of the Cape Verde Islands at 5 p.m. AST. What’s more, its north-northwest heading at nearly 18 mph, with a gradual turn to the north anticipated, made it somewhat doubtful that Danielle would even complete its transocean trek to the Americas.

With Hurricane Charley (which dissipated as a tropical storm near New England Monday) as a fresh example, a source commented, “One thing I never see discussed about powerful hurricanes is the fact that they tend to knock out power load generation more than they do production.” Everybody seems focused on the bullish aspects of lost production, he continued, when usually it’s a bearish development that electric plants’ demand for gas gets cut greatly.

His thinking was getting reinforcement in Charley-devastated Florida Monday (see related story). Florida Gas Transmission’s normal deliveries of 2-2.1 Bcf/d into the state were down to an estimated 1.99 Bcf/d because of power outages, said a spokeswoman. Similarly, Gulfstream was off about 100 MMcf/d from its usual 500 MMcf/d due to two power plants served by Gulfstream being down.

A Northeast utility buyer agreed that the mini-rebound in cash Monday was chiefly due to the screen’s gain Friday. The weather’s still bearish though, he said, and because of the drops in all of Nymex’s energy futures products Monday, “I would expect cash to experience moderate softness Tuesday.” His company was able to find some Northeast buyers but couldn’t get rid of all its gas, so it just took what was left over into storage, he said. The buyer said recent overnight lows were in the 50s and “a few customers might be” turning on heaters, but he can’t really detect any heating load.

Any eastern warming trends are negligible at this point, although parts of the South may approach 90 degrees later this week. Meanwhile, the West, which had been seeing the most “genuine” summer heat last week, will have most of the region near or below norms Tuesday, with only the Pacific Northwest remaining very hot, according to The Weather Channel.

Lehman Brothers analyst Thomas Driscoll projects a storage injection of 70 Bcf to be announced for the week ended Aug. 13.

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