The cash market remained in a softening mode for the most part Wednesday, but only a couple of declines exceeded a dime and some points, particularly in the Rockies and at the Southern California border, registered moderate gains.

However, Wednesday’s small show of relative strength was deemed unlikely to continue today. According to AGA’s Wednesday afternoon report, 108 Bcf was injected into storage last week. The figure handily surpassed most prior expectations and further enhanced suspicions that storage demand will be winding down drastically in the second half of injection season, which won’t even begin until mid-July. The July futures contract, after spending most of the day less than a dime lower, eventually went off the trading books with a loss of more than 20 cents on the day.

“We were really rocking and rolling with all the gas we had to buy today,” said a Northeast utility staffer reporting larger than usual volumes. Although a cold front was expected to cool northern New England off by today, the rest of the Northeast likely will continue to endure high temperatures in the 90s. Area citygates ranged from about a nickel down to almost a nickel higher.

A Midcontinent trader said a few nuclear units are down in the Midwest, and he heard the PJM power pool was short and pulling electricity from the Cinergy pool. However, that didn’t translate into any big power price spikes that might have boosted gas numbers significantly, he said. The trader did see Chicago citygates picking up by 6-7 cents near deadline, but they still averaged about a nickel down for the day.

Rockies pipes and border-SoCalGas, which had seen some of Tuesday’s biggest plunges, responded to hotter regional weather with upticks that were generally about a dime or slightly higher. However, the Northern California points of Malin and the PG&E citygate continued to dive. The citygate saw Wednesday’s biggest drop of more than 40 cents in a volatile trading range of more than a dollar as the utility projected that linepack would be exceeding upper target levels by Friday.

A tropical disturbance was moving westward Wednesday from the Bahamas toward Florida, but it was not considered significant to Gulf of Mexico production.

Screen weakness continued to be felt in bidweek action. A western marketer reporting a PG&E citygate range from the mid $3.60s to the mid $3.90s “so far” said the $3.90s deals occurred Monday while the $3.60s trading was happening Wednesday.

“There’s plenty of gas to go around. That pretty much sums it up,” said a Gulf Coast source. The end of the current bear market keeps looking further and further off, he added, especially “after the world kind of fell apart on us” when AGA came out with yet another 100 Bcf-plus storage report and the Nymex dove in response.

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