With the extreme heat that has cooked much of North America over the past three weeks now in the market’s rear-view mirror and Tropical Depression Chris having faded into oblivion over Cuba during the weekend, most of the cash market continued to drop Monday. But several Rockies/Pacific Northwest/San Juan-Permian ranged from flat to about 60 cents in response to a total shutdown of the Opal (WY) Plant for Tuesday’s gas day (see Daily GPI, July 17).

The overall majority losses ranged from a couple of pennies to nearly 70 cents. Most of the biggest dips occurred at newly cooled Northeast citygates, while many of the smaller ones were reported at points in the Midcontinent, where high temperatures will be approaching 100 degrees Tuesday.

No offshore shut-ins or evacuations were reported with Chris out of the market picture. A disturbance east of the Windward Islands bears watching, but offers no imminent threat, The Weather Channel said. However, it could organize into a tropical depression later Monday or Tuesday, the forecaster said.

One western marketer, who had predicted last week there would be no Opal trading Monday, reported seeing absolutely no physical Opal deals being traded on an online service Monday.

Probably due to a storage build-up in anticipation of the Opal Plant outage, nominated volumes for Monday at the Southern California border took a huge jump of 320,000 MMBtu/d, or 16%, from Friday levels, according to Bentek Energy analysis of flows at 14 natural gas trading hubs (https://intelligencepress.com/features/bentek/).

Chances of a rally in cash prices anytime soon are considered slim to none. Natural gas futures followed up Friday’s drop of 4.6 cents with an even bigger one of 33.9 cents Monday, disconnecting totally from a super-strong petroleum market. Crude oil for September delivery raced more than $2 higher to close just shy of $77/bbl after BP’s announcement that it is shutting in its Prudhoe Bay oilfield in Alaska — the nation’s largest with normal output of 400,000 bbl/d, or about 8% of U.S. supply — due to the discovery of a leak and severe corrosion in the pipeline system serving the field (see futures story).

Despite seasonal to below seasonal temperatures having returned to the key Midwest and Northeast market areas, traders did not entirely lack for cooling load. Besides the Midcontinent, high in the 90s or low 100s are predicted for Tuesday in much of the South, the desert Southwest, California and the northern Plains.

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