Uniform direction of price movement returned to the spot market Tuesday after a lengthy absence. Quotes rose across the board, with only one point failing to realize a double-digit advance. The gains were based primarily on a warm spell in the Northeast and the previous day’s 29-cent increase by the October futures contract, which will see its last day of trading Wednesday.

A nickel gain by Questar in the Rockies anchored the low end of Tuesday’s firmness. Otherwise prices were up from a little more than 15 cents to nearly 70 cents.

The cash market will have essentially neutral guidance for Wednesday after the screen turned in a 1-cent loss Tuesday. Also, an approaching cold front in parts of the Northeast will limit any further upside potential for regional heat, although Boston was predicted to see a high in the low 90s Wednesday, which would exceed any peak temperature levels in the South.

The specter of nearly full storage continues to loom over the market as a potential depressant. Tennessee became the latest pipeline to disallow further interruptible injections into its Northern Storage facilities and also said interruptible storage customers must empty their accounts by Oct. 15 (see Transportation Notes). And CIG, which issued an OFO two weeks ago due to storage inventories being at or near operational field limits (see Daily GPI, Sept. 12), said that unless “there are significant changes,” it anticipates that the OFO will continue into October.

Tropical Storm Karen was christened Tuesday morning by the National Hurricane Center. But the new storm was drawing little gas market interest; not only was it still way out in the Atlantic (about 1,430 miles east of the Windward Islands at 5 p.m. AST Tuesday) but the NHC’s projected tracking for Karen had it curving to the north and not approaching any land masses.

Drawing more attention from gas interests was a disturbance in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico that was given a chance of developing into a tropical depression by The Weather Channel (TWC). However, as of Tuesday afternoon the primary effect of the disturbance was its potential for sending more rain into Louisiana and possibly Arkansas and far East Texas, TWC said. (Late that afternoon the NHC designated it as Tropical Depression 13, which at 5:15 p.m. CDT was about 190 miles west of Tampico, Mexico, and moving slowly to the southwest. Such a path would keep it well to the south of the U.S. offshore production area.)

With Gulf of Mexico gas shut-ins related to Tropical Depression 10 (later Tropical Storm Jerry) having dwindled to less than 200 MMcf/d, Minerals Management Service (MMS) said Tuesday was the last day it would report such statistics. According to reports from eight companies, no platforms or mobile drilling rigs remained evacuated Tuesday, MMS said. It also counted 194 MMcf/d of gas and 51,738 b/d of oil as still being shut in.

A Gulf Coast producer said at first there didn’t seem to be that much new power generation demand in the Northeast, even with the forecast of Boston heat. But then he realized there was a lot of “flipping” of gas packages going on with generators as the ultimate buyers.

A Florida utility buyer said he was doing only minimal trading for October, with his company having summer term deals still running through October. Besides, most of the Sunshine State’s summer heat has faded away by the start of October, he said. He reported getting these basis offers (all Florida Gas): Zone 1, minus 14-8 cents; Zone 2 flat; and Zone 3 as much as plus 30 cents.

The buyer explained the wide disparity in Florida Gas basis by noting that it’s harder to access supplies out of Zones 1 and 2, while there’s a lot more unconstrained gas in Zone 3, “which makes it a seller’s market there.” He said the return of Matagorda Offshore Pipeline System operations last month had infused some additional supplies into Florida Gas Zone 1, but it didn’t to make much of a market difference.

A utility buyer in the Lower Midwest said current “nice weather” meant fairly little gas demand. His company had fairly strong power generation load through weekend, but it had fallen off a lot since then along with falling temperatures. He reported buying October baseload at Northern Natural-demarc for a fixed price of $5.92, while demarc was fetching index plus 2-3 cents.

In its forecast for the Oct. 1-5 workweek, the National Weather Service (NWS) looks for above-normal temperatures throughout the Northeast, Midwest and Midcontinent, and also in the eastern Upper Plains and northern half of the South from central Texas through the upper edges of Georgia and South Carolina. It also expect above-normal readings in all of Florida except the Panhandle. NWS predicted below-normal conditions everywhere west of a north-south line roughly paralleling the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains.

Ron Denhardt of Strategic Energy & Economic Research estimates that a storage injection of 75 Bcf will be reported for the week ending Sept. 21.

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