Despite having already lost or being about to lose a significant amount of power generation load for air conditioning in key market areas, the cash market was able to ride a prior-day screen advance of 14.1 cents along with whatever cooling load will remain Thursday to mostly moderate gains at a majority of points on Wednesday.

The Northeast bore the brunt of drops ranging up to about 20 cents. Although that region and the Mid-Atlantic were struggling to cope with extreme power usage prompted by hot weather, the prospect of lower temperatures by Thursday’s flow day allowed gas buyers to scale back their purchases Wednesday. Several utilities in the PJM Interconnection grid were making 5% voltage cuts in their service areas Wednesday afternoon, and Consolidated Edison in New York was appealing for as much energy conservation as possible (see story in Power Market Today).

Declines outside the Northeast were scattered and interspersed with prices that were flat to about 15 cents higher. Most of the gains were in single digits.

New York City provided an example of how much conditions would change in the Northeast as a cold front moved in. The Big Apple’s high in the low 90s Wednesday was expected to be replaced by a high just shy of 80 degrees Thursday.

Much of the Midwest had already cooled off considerably from record-setting heat levels earlier in the week. Although it was due to warm again into the low 80s Thursday, Chicago’s high Wednesday was predicted to be 76 degrees. Detroit was seeing a similar pattern on the thermometer. As if to reinforce how much things had changed, The Weather Channel reported that more than two dozen date-specific record lows in the 40s and 50s were recorded Wednesday morning from South Dakota to Kansas.

That left most of the residual significant cooling demand for Thursday confined to the South and West, and even the Southwest was moderating back to seasonal temperature levels.

Thursday’s price direction was a tough call, said one source. The declines in power generation load indicated softening, he said, but the fact that the screen made an even stronger gain Wednesday than on Tuesday could support cash prices for one more day.

Because next Monday will be Aug. 1, daily deals done Thursday will be for three-day flows through Sunday. That will be followed by Friday trading for Monday-only flow.

It had gotten “very cool” in the Upper Midwest, said a marketer there who reported a temperature barely above 70 degrees Wednesday afternoon after an overnight low in the 50s. She didn’t buy any daily gas Wednesday and expected the same Thursday, noting that she wouldn’t “have to put up with these high prices” any more until August begins.

Since the screen usually provides a fairly accurate indication of month-to-month index movement, it seems safe to say that most if not all August indexes will be up more than half a dollar. The August futures contract settled at $7.647 following a 22.2-cent homestretch sprint upward. That’s more than 65 cents above where July went off the board, falling 16.2 cents to $6.976 on its expiration day.

The Upper Midwest marketer said she was buying August baseload on a last-day settlement basis of plus 10 cents on both Consumers Energy and MichCon, so it looks like her delivered gas for August would be priced in the mid $7.70s.

A Gulf Coast trader reported having already finished bidweek business before Wednesday. “It doesn’t take us long,” she explained, because nearly all of the independent producer clients for whom she markets gas wanted to go with indexed deals.

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