Continuing losses of cooling load, a 17.4-cent drop by September futures a day earlier and the usual weekend decline of industrial demand ganged up to depress prices by double-digit amounts at all cash points Friday.

Losses ranged from a little more than a dime to about 40 cents. The Northeast, which was cooling down rapidly from above-normal temperatures through midweek, tended to see most of the biggest drops, although declines in the rest of the market were fairly substantial at 20 cents or more in most cases.

Prompt-month futures wavered on either side of flat during the morning before going on to record an eventual loss of 14.1 cents on the day (see related story).

ExxonMobil Corp. began evacuating all 200 personnel Friday from the Sable Offshore Energy Project about 125 miles from Nova Scotia in preparation for the high seas and strong winds expected to be generated locally late in the weekend by Hurricane Bill. Because Sable already was down for maintenance, the evacuation isn’t affecting production, said a spokeswoman, who added that the evacuation was expected to be completed by Saturday.

Traders were not impressed by a small area of disturbed weather associated with a tropical wave that formed Friday about 525 miles southwest of the Cape Verde Islands off West Africa. Any further development would be slow to occur, the National Hurricane Center said.

A cold front would keep reducing highs in the Northeast that had been unseasonably warm through Wednesday, with New York City expected to reach only the 80 area Saturday. The Midwest had already reached a cool zone by midweek, and would remain cool with peak temperatures at several metropolitan areas predicted at around 70 Saturday.

The bearish forecasts were numerous, with most of the South east of Oklahoma-Texas failing to reach 90 Saturday, and only a warm Rockies joining the sizzling desert Southwest in producing significant cooling load in most of the West.

Spreads were pretty tight Friday between the Gulf Coast and Northeast, a Texas marketer said, but it was possible to make a little money on variable transportation costs due to lower fuel charges. Even without any new tropical storm activity on the radar, the marketer said he would “go out on a limb” and project that cash prices might be up a little Monday.

He wasn’t seeing numbers yet for September baseload, but said futures weakness virtually guarantees that first-of-month indexes will be lower for a shoulder-month market.

A Midwest utility buyer reported a “very low-demand period” with temperatures cooler than normal. However, he said he had seen a prediction of a colder-than-normal winter coming up. He said he suspected that the recent rebound in gas-seeking drilling rigs was mainly spurred by producers who face a choice of either drilling now or losing their lease rights down the road.

The buyer said he had already bought a couple of September packages into Northern Natural-demarc at index minus a cent.

The Baker Hughes Rotary Rig Count racked up another gain in drilling rigs actively searching for natural gas in the U.S. during the week ending Aug. 21, following an extended series of declines in the first half of 2009 that only began reversing a little more than a month ago. The latest gain of seven rigs to 695 matched the previous week’s increase. One rig quit the Gulf of Mexico search, Baker Hughes said, but eight were added onshore. Its latest tally is 3% higher than the month-earlier level but down 56% from a year ago.

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