Near-flat pricing continued to set the pace for the cash market for the third day in a row Friday. The previous day’s 18.4-cent increase by July futures following a mildly bullish storage build report, along with warm to hot weather forecasts in several areas, failed to have much supportive effect on prices.

The weekend decline of industrial load had its typical bearish influence on the spot market.

The Midcontinent joined the West in seeing most of the declines ranging from 2-3 cents to about 85 cents (only the Florida citygate dive exceeded about a dime). Otherwise quotes were flat to a little more than a nickel higher.

Monday’s cash market will have considerably negative futures influence after Nymex’s prompt-month contract fell 16.5 cents (see related story).

After a low-pressure system that had provided a brief psychological boost to the market dissipated around midweek in the mid-Atlantic, the National Hurricane Center said a “strong tropical wave” moving over the Lesser Antilles island chain Friday between Puerto Rico and Venezuela only had a 20% chance of becoming a tropical storm during the succeeding 48 hours.

Although fairly hot weather in the southern U.S. from the South Atlantic coast through the desert Southwest was predicted to continue through the weekend, rainy conditions were expected to dampen air conditioning from the Northeast through the Midwest and into much of the West and Canada.

A Lower Midwest utility buyer said recent hot and muggy weather had been cooled a bit by rain. Storage injections constituted most of the utility’s gas purchases last week, she said. There has been some cooling load but it hasn’t gotten very big yet because of rainy conditions.

©Copyright 2010Intelligence Press Inc. All rights reserved. The preceding news reportmay not be republished or redistributed, in whole or in part, in anyform, without prior written consent of Intelligence Press, Inc.