The daily cash market seemed to be looking for direction Tuesday, seeing an approximately even mix of higher, lower and flat numbers. Consistency within market regions was lacking again in some cases as quotes ranged from down 20 cents to up about 15 cents. Most price movement up or down was in single digits.

Meanwhile, a 14.1-cent futures advance was lifting prices for August baseload, sources said.

Although utilities in the Northeast continued to warn of possible record-setting power demand from hot weather (see story in Power Market Today), a cold front expected to bring some relief from the heat by Wednesday night allowed citygates in the region to fall by up to a little more than a dime. The Midwest was starting to get a moderate cooldown, but delivered prices there mostly were flat to modestly higher, with only the Chicago citygate recording a drop of about a nickel.

That left most of the remaining very high temperatures in the South and West, which was reflected in small upticks at many points in the Gulf Coast and Rockies/Pacific Northwest/Western Canada regions.

The announcement by Southern Natural Gas that it had completed repairs to all remaining facilities damaged by Hurricane Ivan last year (see Transportation Notes) left only about 14 MMcf/d still shut in on Tennessee as the sole vestige of Ivan-related outages nearly a year after the storm.

Much of the U.S. will be experiencing high heat levels again next week, according to the National Weather Service. In its six- to 10-day forecast for the Aug. 1-5 workweek, NWS excludes only the seaside states along the East and Gulf Coasts in looking for above normal temperatures from western New York through the Midwest, upper Southeast, Great Plains, Midcontinent and Rockies. It also predicted above normal readings in Utah, western Arizona, and most of Nevada and California. The state of Washington along with northern Idaho and northern Oregon is the only area where NWS expects below normal temperatures.

First Enercast Financial analyst Agbeli Ameko predicted an injection of 51 Bcf for the storage report that will be released Thursday morning. “Storage injections for last week are expected to be reported approximately 25% lower than average for this time of year,” Ameko said. “Blame for this lower injection can be attributed to lost production in the Gulf from Hurricane Emily, strength in industrial demand and support from summer heat across the nation. Next week’s injections are expected to be reported 25% lower than normal, given record heat across the Midwest and into the East. High electric loads have gas-burning peak units running at full capacity in many regions of the U.S.”

The daily market in the Pacific Northwest and Western Canada has gotten very quiet now that Westcoast has finished its McMahon Plant turnaround, a Calgary-based producer said. No more significant outages are scheduled anytime soon in the area, he added.

The producer observed that the screen “shot up today [Tuesday] and so did bidweek prices.” He reported selling August baseload at Sumas in the high $6.00s, which he said was up about 15 cents from Monday, closely matching the gain at Nymex. Westcoast Station 2 traded at C$6.85, while intra-Alberta was about C18 cents higher than that, he said.

A Southwest marketer agreed that Tuesday’s screen strength was responsible for August prices moving higher. She reported these numbers for bidweek deals done Tuesday: Transwestern-West Texas, $6.12-20; El Paso-San Juan $5.95-6.10; El Paso-Permian, $6.75; and Waha, $6.96.

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