Forecasts of triple-digit temperatures helped ignite triple-digit price spikes Monday at quite a few points in the Gulf Coast and Northeast. All cash trading points were up by at least 30 cents. Transco Zone 6-New York City led the climb with a humongous gain of nearly $1.70.

The West, which had tended to see the worst of North America’s hot weather in the previous two to three weeks, is getting a bit of a break early this week with most of the highest temperatures having shifted into the eastern half of the U.S. Thus most of the smallest increases were concentrated at western points. Some parts of the Rockies will fail to get above the 50s Tuesday, according to The Weather Channel (TWC), and 60s highs will be common along West Coast beaches.

For most of the U.S., though, August will begin resembling an oven set on high. The widespread heat was already threatening the operations of several power grid operators Monday (see story in Power Market Today) with the prospect of even greater challenges to come Tuesday in some cases.

While it anticipated record-setting demand Monday, the Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator declared an Emergency Energy Alert 1 for its West Region. Problems with Midwestern electricity supplies were exacerbated by weekend outages at a few nuclear units.

PJM Interconnection expects to establish another record for load on its system Tuesday, breaking the previous one of 139,746 MW set July 17. Chicago-based Commonwealth Edison expected record-breaking demand even sooner, saying it was likely to surpass on Monday the previous all-time peak of 23,295 MW set July 17.

Chances of sizeable cash gas price gains continuing Tuesday are excellent. Not only will very high temperatures remain in the forecast for many areas, but the cash market should have a lot of support from an extremely strong screen Monday. August futures soared by a little more than a dollar to $8.210, the highest level for a prompt-month contract since April 17 (see futures story).

The lessening of storage refill concerns caused by the report of a 7 Bcf withdrawal for the week ending July 21 is also lending support to the cash market. Most traders again are expecting a low build to be reported Thursday, and a few think last week was hot enough that a second small pull may have resulted.

Iroquois Zone 2 averaged just above $10 Monday, while Transco Zone 6-NYC fell just short of the $10 level. The last time Northeast citygates saw quadruple-digit averages was in Jan. 6 trading for the Jan. 7-8 weekend.

The northern Plains and Upper Midwest will cool off a bit Tuesday as a cold front moves in their direction south from Canada. The Dakotas and western Minnesota are expected to see peak temperatures in the 70s, while ahead of the front the 90s and 100s will prevail. Most of the South will see highs in the 90s, but parts of Oklahoma, Texas, Georgia and the Carolinas will soar to 100 or more, TWC said. Only the northern end of New England and northern New York state are forecast to stay relatively moderate when a two-to-three day heat waves begins blistering the Northeast Tuesday.

A Midcontinent/Midwest marketer said his market area should see two more days of extreme heat before getting cooled off by the cold front. “It’s hot and everybody is buying” gas, he said — so much so that despite the actual weather, the currently heavy demand in this market “feels like winter.” NGPL is starting some maintenance Tuesday that will cut Chicago-area deliveries by 25%, he said, estimating that the work might keep 400,000 Dth/d out of the market for about a week.

The marketer said he was not aware of anybody still trading August baseload Monday. He didn’t even see any such postings on an electronic on-line trading service, saying that would probably be where someone would turn for any last-minute packages. Bidweek results coming in to NGI Monday showed some small trades made Monday at several locations, but the price jump on those compared to the bulk of the trading last week could materially widen the range.

It’s now “oppressive heat” to a utility buyer in the South. It was primarily just hot previously, he explained, and now it’s still very hot and a lot more humid than before. His utility set a record for power distribution volume over the weekend, he said. The area forecast shows no end to the heat in sight through at least the end of this week. Despite the high heat levels, the buyer said he was surprised by how much the screen spiked.

His utility wasn’t looking for much gas during bidweek, but didn’t find all that much available, the buyer continued. He found it kind of puzzling why more sellers weren’t out working the August market when it appeared that indexes would be up a dollar or more.

It’s cooled off in the Pacific Northwest, said a regional utility buyer, but she actually would have preferred that the heat stayed around a while longer. There’s already enough cool to cold weather during the winter, she added. The area can usually count on at least one heat wave during August, she said, but she didn’t know if any were in the forecast yet.

Bidweek was a nonevent for the buyer, who said her company almost never buys monthly baseload any more, but instead gets by on term contracts and daily purchases.

Florida citygate volumes took a big dip after Florida Gas Transmission ended an Overage Alert Day last Thursday. Citygate nominations for Monday flow were down 155,000 MMBtu/d, or 8%, from the previous Friday, according to Bentek Energy (https://intelligencepress.com/features/bentek/). However, they are likely to rebound handsomely Tuesday after the pipeline issued a new OAD Monday, citing market-area forecasts of highs in the mid 90s (see Transportation Notes). Florida Gas Zone 3 prices responded by jumping nearly $1.40 to average about $9.20 — far higher than any other Gulf Coast points.

Forecasters are keeping an eye on three areas of disturbed weather in the Atlantic and Caribbean, but none pose any immediate threat to offshore production. The one in the Caribbean wasn’t very well organized Monday and didn’t look like it would develop much, if at all, but it was pouring heavy rain on Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and eastern Hispaniola. What TWC called “a well defined wave” in the central Atlantic had the potential to become a tropical depression in the next day or two. In the eastern Atlantic a low-pressure area southeast of the Cape Verde Islands was not well organized.

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