Monday’s 28.6-cent retreat by August futures proved to have less negative impact on Tuesday’s cash market than one might have expected. Most points were able to find enough cooling load and/or storage purchasers to range from flat to a little more than a quarter higher Tuesday. The Northeast tended to see most of the biggest gains of about a dime or more; a large majority of the upticks were in single digits.

Mixed price changes remained in force as some Rockies points (along with a handful of others elsewhere) fell by up to a quarter. Pipeline maintenance and a relative lack of cooling load in California and the Pacific Northwest continued to weigh down the overall Rockies market. However, Rockies point were not uniformly softer. With highs in the mid 90s forecast for Wednesday in Denver and Cheyenne, WY, CIG was able to advance on localized cooling load, and as the main Rockies outlet to Midwest/Midcontinent markets, Cheyenne Hub also was able to post a gain.

Tuesday’s trading left Northwest-domestic as the only point still priced above its first-of-month index.

Although expected temperatures in much of the East did not seem conducive to continued price firmness, the Midcontinent and Lower Midwest could count on highs in the 90s to keep air conditioners humming and power generators busy. Otherwise, only the interior West and some sections of the South are due to get above 90 degrees Wednesday.

The Midcontinent has been getting very hot for a while now, enough to justify the use of gas-fired peaking generation units most of the time, said a regional marketer. He also noted that although the August futures contract finally succumbed to a 6.9-cent loss Tuesday, it had been up a few cents early in the day while cash trading was still going on, which likely helped late cash deals stay firm.

However, the marketer thinks most points will be softer Wednesday. He doesn’t expect any “huge” price drops, but said the second screen decline in a row should result in mildly lower cash prices since hot weather fundamentals will still be kind of light outside the central part of the nation and inland West. He also said he expects price movement to be small in most cases because “we’re seeing pretty much range-bound pricing” in the cash market currently.

More heat will be moving into the East later this week, the marketer said, so that should keep prices from falling very much and may even cause a cash rally as the weekend approaches. Transportation issues are minimal for now, he added. NGPL maintenance is cutting some firm transport on the Amarillo Line, but that’s not having much impact on prices, he said.

The National Weather Service is predicting above-normal temperatures during the July 23-27 workweek for a wide swath of the U.S. extending from the Northeast (excluding New England) and upper South through the Midwest and upper Midcontinent into the Plains and Rockies to as far west as the eastern ends of Oregon and Washington state and also dipping into eastern California and most of Arizona. Below-normal readings are expected in the lower South from Florida, Georgia and most of South Carolina through the southeastern half of New Mexico.

Ron Denhardt of Strategic Energy & Economic Research looks for a storage build of 69 Bcf to be reported for the week ending July 13.

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