Surprising more than one trader, the cash market didn’t follow its usual recent pattern of following Tuesday’s screen dive on the following day. Instead, cash was flat to up 50 cents in most cases Wednesday. Most gains were in single digits.

Rockies numbers outperformed the overall market with rebounds of 30-50 cents or so as a one-day Northwest Pipeline outage was coming to an end. However, a majority of Rockies prices remained under a dollar. San Juan Basin quotes saw the only significant downturn of 10 to 30 cents as much cheaper Rockies gas would be allowed to flow into the basin again and compete for market on Thursday’s flow day.

A couple of sources said they considered general weather fundamentals as still too weak to justify Wednesday’s modest firmness. But they did acknowledge that high temperatures in the 90s are dominating the southern half of the U.S., and the 90-degree-plus readings are even due in parts of the Upper Plains Thursday.

One utility buyer suggested the early strength in gas futures Wednesday may have helped cancel some of the previous day’s negativity. She and others also thought traders may have been anticipating a bullish storage report from EIA Thursday morning. However, a marketer jested that if the report is bearish (which he defined as greater than the comparable year-ago injection of 76 Bcf), “then this market is going to get as sick as a sailor on shore leave.”

The most popular conjecture about the relative lack of softening was related to Tropical Storm Edouard remaining a potential threat to Gulf of Mexico production. An advisory from New York City-based Weather 2000 said, “Our biggest concern…was the potential for Edouard to re-emerge in the northeast Gulf of Mexico after traversing Florida. With minimal topographical barriers (i.e., mountains) and a relatively short distance to travel, some structure of Edouard should survive. By the very end of the week and into the weekend, we could be dealing with a storm located south of the Florida Panhandle. This would be an ideal ocean and atmospheric environment for Edouard to re-develop (if it weakens significantly over Florida), and worse, a decent environment for explosive development (i.e., becoming a hurricane).”

The forecasting service continued, “Aside from Edouard, we are also alarmed about another Gulf system south of Louisiana. Waters are warm, shear is minimal, upper-air outflow is healthy and convection is robust. Thus, we believe another storm will be imminently classified in the Gulf of Mexico within 3-24 hours. Furthermore, we believe this system will likely become Tropical Storm Fay.”

Tropical Storm Edouard was close to making landfall late Wednesday afternoon, being about 25 miles southeast of St. Augustine, FL, at 5 p.m. EDT, according to the National Weather Service. It was expected to drop to tropical depression status after moving over land.

Dolly was becoming only a market afterthought, having been downgraded to a tropical depression and moving north-northwest about 930 miles east-southeast of Bermuda late Wednesday morning, according to the National Hurricane Center’s final Dolly advisory.

An eastern utility buyer thought the Gulf Coast market was a few cents higher because “I heard the Transco market area was getting back to normal temperatures after being cooler over Labor Day weekend. The Northeast is not really all that hot, but the rebound in load helped keep Gulf Coast prices from following Nymex’s Tuesday dip.”

A producer commented, “I noticed [Transco] Zone 6-NYC ran up 15-20 cents at the end. It is hard to explain; there is mild weather and only light demand. Mid-morning prices weren’t covering variable [costs] from the Gulf to New York, so people tried to abandon transport. This resulted in a time-delayed price spike towards closing as traders scrambled to get some gas.

” The prompt month futures contract gave cash a little technically driven strength at the end. It seems the Northeast swing market is all technicals, except when we have 100-degree weather. But the trend has changed, so that fundamentals are starting to become more important. All of the problems our industry has had this past year is pushing more importance back to fundamentals, but traders are fighting it, kicking and screaming all the way.”

An aggregator doesn’t see much chance for Rockies prices to recover from their recent sub-dollar depths anytime soon, noting that both the Clay Basin and Jackson Prairie storage facilities in the West are “very close to full, which means their [Rockies] weakness will continue until winter withdrawals start.” (In its daily system status report Wednesday morning, Northwest said Jackson Prairie had 18.5 Bcf socked away; its working gas capacity is a little more than 19 Bcf.)

There’s still “pretty good air conditioning load” in the Texas-Louisiana production area, and it should stick around through at least mid-September, a marketer said.

A buyer attributed a late run-up at the Chicago citygate to end-users who were covering short supply positions, noting that many in the Midwest had entered the month with no baseload deals.

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