Flat quotes at four points were the only exceptions to rising prices in the rest of the cash market Tuesday. The previous day’s 5.5-cent gain by August futures may have helped stimulate the rally to some extent, but it’s likely that forecasts of Wednesday peak temperatures from the 80s through the 100s in nearly the entire U.S. played a greater role.

Gains ranged from about a nickel to nearly 55 cents and tended to be strongest in the Northeast, where New York City and Philadelphia were expected to see highs around 90 Wednesday.

The Midwest also will begin experiencing peak heat levels around 90 at a number of locations Wednesday, while highs in the mid 90s are proliferating in the South. The forecast for the Midcontinent and Rockies calls for temperatures as high as the low to mid 90s, and of course the desert Southwest is seeing its normal midsummer mercury levels in the 100s.

Areas along the West Coast and in the Upper Plains and Upper Midwest near the Canadian border are about the only sections of the U.S. that are currently failing to reach at least the 80s. Even Toronto in Eastern Canada can expect a high in the low 80s Wednesday.

Although cooling load will continue to be fairly plentiful for Thursday, the cash market will have a tough time sustaining its advance Wednesday after Nymex’s August natural gas contract followed the lead of a plunging petroleum products complex and fell 48.2 cents (see related story).

Maritimes & Northeast U.S. reported learning that the Sable Offshore Energy Project offshore Nova Scotia had experienced a decrease in production during Monday’s gas day. A spokesman for Sable operator ExxonMobil Canada confirmed Tuesday that production “was temporarily affected by an operational issue, which has been resolved.”

Both Western Canada trading points (NOVA Inventory Transfer and Westcoast Station 2) were flat as regional cooling load remained minimal. Calgary is failing to reach the 70-degree mark, while Vancouver is barely surpassing the mid 70s.

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) said Bertha had become “the longest-lived July tropical storm in history” Tuesday. Bertha failed to regain hurricane strength and was headed to the north-northeast after having lashed Bermuda with high winds and rain.

On Monday a couple of analysts had given a tropical wave in the mid-Atlantic a chance of becoming a tropical depression or even Tropical Storm Cristobal in the succeeding day or two, but the likelihood was fading Tuesday. The NHC said early Tuesday afternoon that the system, about 770 miles east of the Windward Islands, “has become less organized during the day. The potential for a tropical depression to form is decreasing since environmental conditions are only marginally favorable for development.”

A utility buyer in the South said although daytime temperatures are peaking in the 90s, his city wasn’t sweating all that much due to overnight lows in the upper 60s. For now the utility’s gas distribution throughput is low, he said, but it’s needing to hit up TVA quite a bit for power system needs. It’s the peak electric demand period of the year, he noted.

The company is still pursuing its storage injection schedule rigorously in July, the buyer added, but he only needs to buy a little swing gas occasionally to supplement monthly baseload and summer term supplies.

The National Weather Service’s six- to 10-day forecast for the July 21-25 workweek calls for below-normal temperatures in three areas: a strip along the West Coast from Washington state’s border with Canada through the northern fourth of California; the southern half of New Mexico along with West and South Texas; and all of Florida along with the southern halves of Georgia and South Carolina and the southeast corner of Alabama.

Above-normal readings are predicted for a large section of the nation east of a line running through eastern Washington, Oregon and California and north of a line along the southern borders of Utah and Colorado before dipping to the southern borders of Oklahoma and Arkansas. The above-normal area also includes all of the Midwest, most of the Northeast (except New England) and the most northerly states of the South.

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