Only the two El Paso-San Juan pools and Tennessee Zone 6 in New England failed to continue rising Thursday. All other points were up anywhere from a nickel to a little more than half a dollar as the cash market derived support from a strong prior-day screen, another net weekly storage withdrawal being reported and high heat across the southern U.S. slowly spreading northward.

A large majority of the gains were in double digits. It is believed that the San Juan softening of 15 cents or so was due to the Opal Plant being scheduled to return to full processing capabilities, supplanting demand that was being filled by San Juan production while the plant was down Tuesday and part of Wednesday. A spokesman for plant operator Williams Field Services said the start-up process began early Wednesday evening and three of the four processing trains were in operation Thursday, with the fourth expected to come online Friday.

Although the Energy Information Administration’s estimate of a 12 Bcf storage withdrawal for the week ending Aug. 4 may have seemed highly bullish, futures traders didn’t see it that way as they sent the September contract 12.2 cents lower on the day. One analyst had anticipated this, saying prior to the report’s release that since the pull was already factored into market expectations, it would probably be a “sell the news” event.

While weather remains moderate for most northern market areas, chances are growing that the Northeast is seeing a modicum of heating load developing. According to The Weather Channel, lows in the 40s are being experienced by some sections of the region, and by Saturday conditions will be even cooler with lows ranging from the 30s and 40s across northern Pennsylvania, upstate New York and northern New England to the 50s in Boston, New York and Philadelphia and the 60s from Washington, DC, southward.

Meanwhile, a gradual spread of hot weather has even Denver anticipating a high near 100 degrees Friday.

Florida Gas Zone 3 has been experiencing very large trading ranges recently, with Thursday’s top-to-bottom spread exceeding $1.30. That is in contrast to much more sedate ranges at its Gulf Coast neighbors, and Florida Gas Zone 3 is averaging about a dollar or more above most Gulf points. It’s a fact that the zone is seeing extra-wide trading ranges, a Florida utility buyer said. All the expensive deals are occurring with pool gas and at two or three points downstream of the pipeline’s Station 10, a constraint point, he said. Anybody who can’t get the cheaper prices elsewhere on the system has to go to a more expensive point to avoid the risk of getting allocated, he added.

The buyer said his company benefits from having Primary Firm transportation in getting cheaper gas, although he questioned why the Zone 3 prices were so much higher than in the rest of the Gulf Coast. Because of the higher Florida Gas Zone 3 prices, suppliers move as much gas as possible into that pipeline from zone interconnects with Southern and Transco, he said.

It may have seemed startling to see Bentek Energy’s analysis of flows at 14 trading points (https://intelligencepress.com/features/bentek/) showing nominated volumes for Thursday of only 10,000 MMBtu/d for MichCon, a drop of 70% from Wednesday. However, Bentek’s Jim Simpson explained that the figure represents a net volume of citygate receipts and deliveries. MichCon is one of the few LDCs that sometimes delivers gas back into the interstate pipes in the process of wheeling gas around its system, he said.

Also, all that Bentek can monitor is the volumes nominated at the citygate from ANR, Great Lakes, Panhandle Eastern and Vector, but Union Gas Ltd., a Canadian LDC, isn’t required to post what it delivers into MichCon like the interstate pipes, Simpson said. Another factor is that during the summer MichCon has relatively little load behind its system other than storage injections, and Michigan facilities are among the farthest along in approaching full storage, he added.

Month-to-date volumes for MichCon have averaged only 33,000 MMBtu/d, down from 305,000 MMBtu/d in August 2005, Bentek said.

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