Spot gas prices crumbled during the June 21-24 trading week despite heat becoming more widespread, for a few days at least, across the country’s midsection. NGI’s Weekly Spot Gas National Avg. plummeted $1.225 to $6.340/MMBtu.

Nymex futures action, meanwhile, continued to be dominated by the Freeport liquefied natural gas (LNG) outage, with the market questioning whether the 2 Bcf/d in available gas would indeed improve struggling storage inventories. The latest government stock report confirmed that theory – and then some – helping to send the July contract down to $6.220 by Friday, off  58.8 cents from Tuesday’s close.

Despite scorching triple-digit temperatures across the South, several other areas of the country still seeing remnants of winter sent prices barreling...