Support from hot weather remained generally meager for the end of August, but the cash market relied on a prior-day rise of 7.9 cents by October futures and forecasts of a potential hurricane entering the Gulf of Mexico production area to rally by often-substantial amounts at all points Wednesday.

Increases across the board ranged from about a nickel to a little more than 35 cents, with a large majority of them being in double digits.

Prompt-month futures will continue to support the cash market Thursday after rising substantially, up by another 14.5 cents (see related story).

Although Irene had disappeared over the weekend, its residual effects continued to devastate parts of the East Coast, especially Vermont. However, Tennessee saw enough market-area demand returning that it ended an Imbalance Warning for three downstream zones (see Transportation Notes). That eliminated the only significant restriction on Northeast transportation. Tennessee Zone 6 was up about a quarter.

A force majeure situation at an onshore processing plant has caused a temporary shutdown of all offshore receipts by Destin Pipeline (see Transportation Notes).

A “large area of disorganized cloudiness and showers” over the northwestern Caribbean Sea remained the greatest threat to Gulf of Mexico production Wednesday as the National Hurricane Center (NHC) upgraded its chances of developing into a tropical storm named Lee to 30%. The system continued to move west-northwestward from near the western tip of Cuba. Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Katia was still encountering open waters in the southeast Atlantic and believed to be following a path that would take it northward off the East Coast — much like Irene.

Except for a continuing moderation trend in southeast Texas back to highs in the lower 90s, the weather outlook saw little change: very warm but not especially hot in the South, mild to slightly warm in the Northeast and Midwest; still very hot from Oklahoma and much of Texas into the desert Southwest; and except for rather hot conditions in parts of the Rockies, the rest of the West being mostly moderate to chilly in Western Canada.

Prices were tending to move up near the end of trading, likely in response to future strength, said a Midcontinent producer, and that portends higher quotes again Thursday. However, he didn’t expect any firmness beyond that, saying there’s no doubt that prices will be softer for the Labor Day weekend .Even Midcontinent weather will be getting quite a bit cooler early next week, he said, but as of Wednesday power generators’ gas purchases remained strong.

IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) indicated moderate increases in bidweek prices in the minuscule amount of September baseload trading still being done on its platform. For instance, ICE said, about 160,000 MMBtu of Houston Ship Channel gas changed hands at a little more than $3.99, up nearly 6 cents from Tuesday. Among the few other examples of last-minute bidweek deals, Northwest-Rockies numbers were up from about $3.88 to $3.91, ICE said.

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