Even as Tropical Storm Don churned into the central and western Gulf of Mexico and hot weather forecasts continued for much of the eastern U.S., prices fell in most of the market Thursday. The fact that trading covered flows over the July 30-31 weekend played a part in the overall softness, and the flat performance of expiration-date futures on Wednesday gave no guidance to cash traders.

Deals done Thursday were for Friday through Sunday flows due to the July-August transition occurring Monday. Friday trading will be for the flow date of Monday.

A large majority of locations saw declines of 2-3 cents to about 15 cents, with the Rockies market recording most of the largest losses. The Northeast saw the largest increases amid numbers ranging from flat to a little more than 30 cents higher.

A 43 Bcf storage injection report from the Energy Information Administration for the week ending July 22 was slightly above consensus estimates on either side of 40 Bcf. The Nymex response was bearish as futures traders pushed the newly ordained September contract 7.4 cents lower (see related story).

Citi Futures Perspective analyst Tim Evans said the report largely confirmed “both that it was hot last week and that production continues to keep pace pretty well with the strong utility demand. The early price reaction suggests that this wasn’t a low enough injection to keep a floor under prices.”

The National Hurricane Center said Don was about 475 miles east-southeast of Corpus Christi, TX, at mid-afternoon Thursday and moving northwestward at nearly 15 mph. The storm was expected to make landfall around late Friday or early Saturday along the lower Texas Gulf Coast.

Shut-in reports as a result of Don were spotty, but spokespeople for Tennessee, Southern and ANR said they had no lost production to report. Transco said about 75 MMcf/d scheduled to flow on its system had been shut in Thursday morning, but it did not anticipate any supply allocations as a result.

The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement’s (BOEM) hurricane response team said that as of 11:30 a.m. CDT, evacuations of personnel from 11 oil and gas platforms had been reported, equivalent to 1.6% of the 679 manned platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. About 148 MMcf/d of gas production, or 2.8% of total Gulf output, had been shut in, BOEM said.

There was little change in the overall weather forecast: warm to hot with peaks in the 90s and 100s across the southern U.S. through the desert Southwest, not quite as hot but still approaching either side of 90 in the Northeast, Midwest and Rockies, and mild to cool along the West Coast through the Pacific Northwest and Western Canada.

Westcoast said its linepack was trending toward below-minimum target levels after being normal for several days. However, Westcoast Station 2 prices were flat.

El Paso Corp.’s Ruby Pipeline was rapidly picking up business for its second day of operations as IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) reported 120,000 MMBtu/d being traded in the Malin, OR, area at an average of $4.12 Thursday (see related story). That was about 2 cents less than Malin deliveries from Canada via GTN-Northwest.

Noting that its hurricane response plan calls for a shut-in of the Matagorda Offshore Pipeline System (MOPS) “when the leading edge of a tropical storm is forecasted by the NWS to cross any production area attached to the MOPS system within 24 hours,” MOPS operator Northern Natural Gas said the impact area of Don was forecasted to cross the south end of the MOPS system Friday evening. Thus it said MOPS production will need to be shut in no later than 2 p.m. CDT Friday.

A utility buyer in the South said his company is cutting back on storage injection purchases because its account should be about 95% full by the end of August. For that reason it was not buying any August baseload, instead relying rely on April-October term deals and dipping into the daily market as necessary, he said.

Bidweek activity diminished quite a lot Thursday, ICE said. In some cases such as the Consumers Energy citygate in Michigan it recorded essentially no change from the previous day’s $4.55 average, but said numbers for El Paso’s Blanco pool in San Juan Basin had fallen from $4.10 to about $4.04. The Houston Ship Channel saw an even bigger drop of about a dime to $4.26, ICE said.

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