The return of industrial demand after a weekend hiatus and modest increases in western cooling load produced a mixed cash market Monday that was dominated by gains of 2-3 cents to a little more than a quarter. Along with several flat points, Monday’s minority losses ran as high as a little more than a quarter.

With overnight lows in the 40s and 50s forecast for the Northeast and Midwest, there may have been a small amount of heating load developing in those market areas. Morning frost is expected to repeat Tuesday in parts of upstate New York and New England, The Weather Channel said, although afternoon temperatures in those area will be pleasant.

With the South continuing to have subpar air conditioning demand for late summer, the West is the repository of most of the remaining significant heat in the U.S. and Canada. That was reflected in western points seeing most of the largest rebounds from Friday’s major softness. Interestingly, the Pacific Northwest and Western Canada points that had resisted the region’s weekend price weakness most strongly (Sumas, Kingsgate, Stanfield, NOVA Inventory Transfer and Westcoast Station 2) were the ones that failed to rally Monday.

Southern Natural Gas and Southern California Gas ended high-linepack OFOs, both implemented last Friday, on Sunday and Monday respectively.

Screen guidance for Tuesday’s cash market was neutral, with October futures recovering from early softness to spend a brief period in positive territory before ending the day down half a penny.

The Minerals Management Service office in New Orleans said Monday no damage to offshore oil and gas operations or infrastructure had been reported to it as a result of an unusual earthquake Sunday morning in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. The quake measured magnitude 6.0 on the Richter scale and was centered about 260 miles southwest of Tampa, FL.

The Atlantic tropical storm scene was highly active Monday, but remained a nonevent for the gas market. Tropical Storm Florence earned hurricane ranking Sunday while punishing Bermuda, but it was moving away from the island nation Monday afternoon on a projected tracking that would keep it away from most of North America. Florence may bring some rain and wind to Canada’s Maritimes provinces before becoming extratropical over the colder waters of the North Atlantic, which could happen by Thursday.

Tropical Storm Gordon became the season’s seventh named storm Monday afternoon, but like predecessors Debby and Florence, Gordon was expected to maintain a mostly northerly heading from its position several hundred miles east of the Leeward Islands. Consulting firm Weather 2000 noted that the 2006 hurricane season is still slightly ahead of pace, since on average the “G” named storm is classified on Sept. 12 each year. Weather 2000 said its research gives 65% odds of Gordon eventually becoming a hurricane. “Similar to the situation with Florence, computer models once again forcibly curve Gordon out into the North Atlantic, brushing aside any landfall threats, but the small size of Gordon (less than a third of the size of Florence at the same stage of development) has made most models oblivious to its existence,” the company said.

There’s not much going on and the cash market is currently pretty quiet, a western marketer commented. “It still feels like we’re in transition” between summer cooling demand and a shoulder month slacking off of that demand, he said. After Friday’s big drops in Rockies prices, suppliers were out selling pretty hard early Monday and not having much trouble finding buyers, the marketer added. There was a weekend dusting of snow in the mountains of his region, an event that ski resort operators doubtless were watching closely, he said.

Baker Hughes reported that 1,413 drilling rigs were seeking gas in the U.S. during the week ending Sept. 8 (https://intelligencepress.com/features/bakerhughes/). That was down three rigs from the previous week, but unchanged from a month earlier and up 16% from the year-ago level, Baker Hughes said. (Of course, the year-ago statistic was impacted by the aftermath effects of Hurricane Katrina.)

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