Former Hurricane Isabel was leaving a messy legacy in the Mid-Atlantic; mostly moderate to cool forecasts dominated the rest of the weather picture; an extra-big storage injection report had its usual day-later impact on the cash market; and of course trading was for the weekend, when industrial load normally slacks off. Small wonder, then, that Thursday’s declines gained downhill momentum and racked up further losses ranging from about a dime to 35 cents Friday.

Isabel had been downgraded through the tropical storm stage to a tropical depression as it sped at nearly 30 mph into Ontario Friday afternoon. All tropical storm warnings had been canceled by 11 a.m. EDT, said the National Hurricane Center, which added that it would issue no more advisories about Isabel.

But a long clean-up was just beginning. Millions of people were left without power, and a Dominion Virginia Power executive said recovery would be “a marathon, not a sprint” and take “days, not hours” (see related story).

Isabel also took a toll on gas demand in the form of powerless grids forcing the shutdown of gas-fired generators and massive rains eliminating a lot of air conditioning load in the stricken areas. Most pipelines appeared to come through the storm unscathed, but Columbia Gas warned shippers that an OFO might become necessary because markets in southeast Virginia were “taking gas at abnormally low levels” (see Transportation Notes). The problem was especially acute at the Emporia, VA interconnect where Columbia receives gas from Transco, it said. No OFO had been issued by press time Friday.

A couple of traders near the coast said Isabel had little physical impact on them personally. One in the Mid-Atlantic said the storm “didn’t affect us much at all. Actually, it was worse Monday from the remnants of [Tropical Storm] Henri.” And a New Jersey source said his area got less than half an inch of rain. “Compared to the near half-foot of rain we got during Hurricane Floyd, that was nothing!” he exclaimed. “A whole lot of hype and worry, and an entire magnitude less rain. It kind of makes me wonder if folks won’t heed the next warning and it does turn out like Floyd, or worse…well, I don’t like to think about it.” The source added, however, that he woke up Friday morning without power at his home, and he hoped “my spouse knows not to open the fridge until the juice is flowing again.”

Henry Hub started near its high point, then traded down over the morning before it “blipped back up at the end,” a Gulf Coast producer said. Transco Station 65 went out strong with some $4.40s being done near deadline due to folks being caught short, he added. The volumes weren’t big, but those points saw “more of a blip than the rest of the market felt,” the producer said.

Many of Friday’s largest dips of a quarter or more occurred in the West, where the market was weighed down by SoCalGas declaring an Overnominations Day for Saturday. Besides that, a marketer said, “it’s cooling off in California, so power prices and also physical gas demand are down.”

Analyst Kyle Cooper of Citigroup said his initial estimation for this week’s storage report “looks for a build quite similar to [last] week” (102 Bcf, that is). The volume will compare with year-ago and five-year average figures of 66 Bcf and 73 Bcf respectively.

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