Most points moved lower again Monday as weather-based demand remained somewhat light in the key northern market areas of the Midwest and Northeast and the screen continued to give off negative vibes. However, a few instances of flat to a little more than a nickel higher numbers in the scorching West averted across the board softening.

The overall price drops ranged from a couple of pennies to nearly half a dollar and were smallest in the West, where extreme heat had spread from the Southwest northward through the West Coast states.

Although the Pacific Northwest is due to get some relief Tuesday from the stifling heat that has developed west of the Cascades, the West may find enough remaining cooling load to eke out a few more small gains in Tuesday’s trading. But it will be tough sledding to achieve any rally in the East after July futures fell another 25.7 cents Monday. Also, much of the Northeast and Midwest is not expected to get above 80 degrees Tuesday.

Florida Gas Zone 3 responded to Florida Gas Transmission’s lifting of a four-day Overage Alert Day Sunday by recording Monday’s biggest drop of more than 45 cents. On the other hand, the fact that SoCalGas, which had depressed Southern California border quotes Friday by issuing a high-linepack OFO for Saturday, had ended the OFO Sunday allowed border prices to rise more than a nickel Monday.

However, although it did not issue an OFO, PG&E projected Monday that linepack would be running slightly above its maximum target level for the next three days.

A utility buyer in the Northeast said throughput has been low enough that his company is not buying much day-to-day gas and plan to only pick up a little baseload for July. The Northeast has had a few heat spells in recent weeks, he noted, but each time temperatures have returned to normal or below normal pretty quickly.

A Texas-based marketer said he believes that daily market weakness has been influenced as much by continuing screen declines as by a dearth of cooling load.

With traders starting to turn more attention to the July bidweek, the marketer said Chicago basis was mostly around minus 23-22 cents Monday. He added that the range had extended to minus 24 cents for a Nicor package and minus 21 cents in a NIPSCO deal. That doesn’t necessarily indicate that Nicor deliveries will be cheaper, he added, saying that the different numbers likely were a result of deal timing and where the screen was at that point.

The marketer also quoted basis of minus 57.5 cents for Northern Natural-demarc along with plus 15 cents offered and plus 13.5 cents bid at Transco Station 65. Chicago fixed prices were going in the low to mid $5.70s, he said. Basis isn’t moving much from June levels, the marketer said; it may be a little weaker but that depends on the location.

Hub Flows: Cheaper Canadian gas and the risk of losing Gulf of Mexico supply because of hurricane damage are two of the factors that have led to a surge in gas flows through the Niagara import point into western New York state. Niagara volumes are nearly 50% higher this June than they were in the comparable year-ago period.

Current Niagara month-to-date nominations averaging 899,000 MMBtu/d are 281,000 MMBtu/d, or 46%, above June 2005 levels, according to gas flow data collected by Bentek Energy (https://intelligencepress.com/features/bentek/). And the trend was continuing, with 939,000 MMBtu/d nominated at the point for Monday, Bentek said.

The volume has gone up because often gas is cheaper at Niagara than other sources of supply for the Northeast, said a regional utility buyer. He also considered it likely that more people are buying at Niagara than at this time last year because of the ongoing constraint put on Gulf Coast supplies by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which didn’t occur until late August and September last year.

In Friday’s trading for this past weekend, Niagara gas prices averaged $6.13, which was nearly a quarter less than Dracut, NH, at $6.37. Niagara was 11 cents cheaper than Columbia Gas in Appalachia.

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