Prices continued to rise at a majority of points Thursday, but once again there were a few areas of minor market weakness. Prospects for a weekend warm-up in the Northeast, along with existing hot weather in the South, Midcontinent, Plains, Rockies and Southwest, apparently trumped the bearish influence of July futures expiring 22 cents lower on Wednesday.

Most of the increases were fairly small in single digits. They ranged from a little under a nickel to about 40 cents, while the few minor losses were even more modest at about a nickel or less.

As on Wednesday, Northeast citygates tended to see most of the larger gains. However, it was the Florida market that really got hot when Florida Gas Transmission issued an Overage Alert Day (see Transportation Notes). The 15% imbalance tolerance was tighter than usual; the pipeline usually sets it at 20% or 25% during an OAD event. The Florida citygate saw Thursday’s biggest uptick, while Florida Gas Zone 3 was nearly 35 cents higher.

The Energy Information Administration exceeded consensus estimates in the 60 Bcf area when it reported a net storage injection of 66 Bcf for the week ending June 23. However, futures traders sent the August contract only 2.5 cents lower in its prompt-month debut. A larger drop probably was curbed by great strength across Nymex’s petroleum products as worries about the closure of a key Louisiana ship channel combined with bearish inventory figures issued Wednesday and fresh global supply concerns.

And the bearish storage news just keeps on coming. Tennessee said Thursday that due to limited capacity, it will be restricting Interruptible Storage (IS) injections and Parks agreements with withdrawals in future months across the system effective Saturday. Also, transfers into IS accounts will not be accepted. “Tennessee anticipates these limitations will continue to be in effect until storage levels are reduced,” the pipeline said.

Southern Natural Gas reported that it was “too close to call” on whether it would need to declare a Type 6 OFO for long imbalances Saturday and/or Sunday.

A Northeast marketer said regional cash prices were “surprisingly strong” again Thursday, but added that the Northeast is getting more humid, which in turn is boosting air conditioning load. Also, he said, end-of-month pipeline balancing issues were helping to support prices.

A Midcontinent producer said OGT was still getting a premium over neighboring interstate pipes because of so much in-state cooling demand (Tulsa was predicted to hit a high of 97 degrees Friday). But he also said it was hard to understand why Midcontinent prices have been so strong recently when Midwest weather is so mild.

The producer reported seeing some people pulling out storage gas to sell in the last couple of days because daily prices are above July numbers. “That will create a little payback demand” next month, he predicted. The economics of the situation are clear, he said: you make your sales in the current month or hold them until the next month depending on which fetch the best price, adding that “it gives sellers options.”

He professed amazement at how little baseload trading seems to be getting done for July, saying that promises a pretty active daily market in July. He also was surprised that “gas is hanging in there so tough” in spite of generally bearish weather and storage.

A marketer in the Upper Midwest said temperatures are pretty comfortable there, and it was even getting chilly enough for her to wear a jacket at night. There’s no “real heat” in the near-term forecast for the region, she said. Her company liked the July futures settlement price, she said, “and negative basis made it even better.” She reported buying for minus 7 cents basis at Consumers Energy and minus 12 cents at MichCon.

The marketer said she was aware of quite a few gas interests who will not be taking Monday off, even though Nymex will not be trading. A Gulf Coast producer agreed, but said it was mostly end-users and utilities that will not take the extra day off Monday. He found that kind of odd, saying it’s often the utilities that will take a day off even when most of the gas industry is working.

Correction: Flows at Northern Natural-demarc did not actually drop by 582,000 MMBtu/d on Wednesday, as reported in Daily GPI. Northern had changed its website the day before and reversed two fields in nominations data, causing Bentek Energy’s automated data retrieval program to pick up erroneous information, a Bentek spokesperson said. Bentek didn’t catch the error until after its report had been sent to NGI Wednesday morning, she said, adding that the problem had been corrected. Demarc volumes for the June 28 gas day should have been 1,329,000 MMBtu/d, up 310,000 MMBtu/d from Tuesday.

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