To absolutely no one’s surprise, cash prices fell at all points but one Thursday. Nearly all were 30 cents or more, with a few Rockies points seeing dollar-plus plunges. The reasons were obvious: receding cooling load in some regions, prior-day screen weakness and the extra loss of industrial load that accompanies a long holiday weekend.

Overall declines ranged from about 20 cents to about $1.20. The biggest price hits occurred in the West and particularly in the Rockies.

Tropical activity was picking up in the latter half of last week. What the National Hurricane Center (NHC) called a “well defined” tropical wave about 300 miles southeast of the Cape Verde Islands as of Wednesday morning gradually morphed into Tropical Depression 2 and then into Tropical Storm Bertha early Thursday. Bertha was still in the far eastern Atlantic about 190 miles south-southwest of the islands at midday Thursday and moving to the west-northwest at nearly 14 mph, NHC said. The agency’s five-day “cone” of projected tracking had the storm pointed north of Bermuda by Tuesday morning, so any likelihood of Bertha reaching the Gulf of Mexico was considered highly remote.

The Energy Information Administration reported an 85 Bcf addition to storage for the week ending June 27. The volume fell slightly short of consensus expectations in the upper 80s Bcf. Nymex traders reacted bullishly, pushing August natural gas futures out of negative territory prior to the report to a little more than a nickel higher soon after report. The contract eventually finished the day up 18.8 cents, which will help support Monday’s cash market.

A cold front moving into the Northeast was expected to take Friday’s high temperatures down a little more than 12 degrees to the 80 area in New York City and mid 70s in Boston. The cooler weather would last through Sunday before a warming trend returns early this week, The Weather Channel (TWC) said.

A cold front had already cooled off the Midwest, with Chicago peaking around 73 Thursday. Temperatures were due to edge a bit higher during the long weekend, but a new cold front will dip southward from Canada early this week, according to TWC, so the Midwest may take a while longer than the Northeast to return to summer-like weather.

For the South, it was pretty much the same old same old through Saturday with highs ranging from the mid 80s to the mid 90s. However, a cold front would take temperatures in the region’s eastern half five to 10 degrees lower on Sunday, TWC said.

Various pipelines were warning all through last week of very low market-area demand during the Fourth of July holiday weekend and pleading with customers to stay in balance and not try to pack the pipes. Southern said Thursday it was “too close to call” on whether it would issue an OFO Type 6 during the Friday-Sunday period. Southern said it anticipated that storage injection requests would exceed capacity by about 250 MMcf/d.

PG&E extended a high-inventory OFO through at least Friday, while Southern California Gas added one of its for Friday (see Transportation Notes).

Florida Gas Transmission (FGT) was having it both ways. Due to a “high probability of rain” in Florida over the next several days, FGT told customers it might issue an Underage Alert Day if linepack levels got too high. But because “high temperatures and humidity can follow rainy weather,” FGT said, it may need to issue an Overage Alert Day “to maintain reliable levels of linepack.”

Prices were “pretty sloppy” Thursday but recovering fairly strongly in later deals, said a Canadian producer. It wasn’t because of the screen uptick following the storage report, he said, but more due to people finding storage injection bargains. He also thought the early plunges were an overreaction and there was some “correction” in subsequent trading. All in all, it was “good to be an early buyer” Thursday, he said.

It was looking like a fairly cool holiday weekend for northern market areas of the United States, the producer continued, saying it was what he calls a “no load at all kind of thing.” But due to the futures advance Thursday and heat expected to return in the Midwest early this week, he saw a good chance of a post-holiday rally.

The producer said he wouldn’t be surprised to see some weekend storage injection constraints on Northern Natural Gas, but added that they shouldn’t affect firm-service customers.

An industrial end-user noted that on a relative basis compared with most other commodities, “natural gas is a bargain. I often choke” on having to pay sky-high fuel prices, but natural gas is one of the least offenders.

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