Who would have guessed? With weather fundamentals mostly moderate outside the Texas-desert Southwest area and starting to diminish in interior California, and futures guidance remaining quite negative after a 15.6-cent loss by the prompt-month contract a day earlier, cash prices sank again at nearly all points Wednesday.

Flat quotes at a few Western Canada and California points were left out of overall losses ranging from 2-3 cents to about 15 cents.

Prospects for a rebound in the physical market are remote — Thursday highs above the 70s and 80s will be scarce (even in most of the South); October futures dropped another 10.6 cents Wednesday; a new tropical storm was looking unlikely to reach the Gulf of Mexico; and a low-demand holiday weekend was just over the horizon.

Barring a definitive turn due west once it reaches the Bahamas area (which would make it shoot the gap between western Cuba and the southern end of Florida), Tropical Storm Erika was looking more likely to emulate Hurricane Bill and Tropical Storm Danny in moving northward along the East Coast rather than heading for the offshore production area.

Much of the Midwest and Northeast is starting to feel a little chill at night, although hardly enough to stoke any heating load, while highs mostly in the 70s are considered quite comfortable. The South is warmer than that with temperatures peaking in the 80s, but such readings are considered subpar for the region in early September.

The Rockies are a little warmer than usual but are not contributing much western cooling demand to the desert Southwest’s usual 100s highs. Although some inland California locations such as Fresno will continue to approach 100 Thursday, others such as Sacramento will be cooling a bit to about 90. Otherwise about the most heat the West will see is the relatively meager mid 80s in Alberta’s Calgary and Edmonton.

After projecting that linepack would be falling below minimum targets Thursday and Friday, PG&E followed up by issuing a low-inventory OFO for Thursday (see Transportation Notes). The OFO kept Malin and the PG&E citygate at flat to barely lower Wednesday.

Temperatures are “pretty comfortable” in his area currently, a Rockies producer said. He professed amazement that Henry Hub numbers were essentially at parity with the Chicago citygate and well below the Southern California border and PG&E citygate Wednesday. That’s an indication of Producing Region storage facilities filling up rapidly, he said, but also reflects something else: “These shale guys are drilling like prices are $10; what are they thinking?” He considered it “really dumb” for them to be ramping up production with the market as weak as it is. He acknowledged that Rockies storage capacity is not as tight as it is in the Gulf Cost.

Look for a 64 Bcf storage injection to be reported for the week ending Aug. 28, according to SunTrust Robinson Humphrey analyst Cameron Horwitz. He attributed his prediction for a larger sequential injection to a week-on-week decline of more than 2 Bcf/d in gas-fired power generation “amid a nearly 20% decline in cooling degree days.”

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