Although flat to nearly 30 cents higher numbers continued in parts of the cash market Tuesday — primarily in the Midcontinent/Midwest, Southwest basins, California and the Pacific Northwest/Western Canada areas — most points were still in softening mode as cooling load remains fairly meager for what is often the hottest month of the year and prior-day screen guidance was negative again.

The majority losses ranged from 2-3 cents to nearly 30 cents. The largest declines were concentrated in the Rockies and Northeast, where opposing weather trends are under way. The Rockies are starting to see peak temperatures rise into the 80s and occasionally 90s again after an invasion of unseasonable chill late last week, while highs are in retreat to either side of 80 in the lower Northeast Wednesday.

Wednesday’s cash market will have some support from the 8.8-cent rally by September futures Tuesday, but it was a hard call on whether that could offset generally weak weather fundamentals to lift cash numbers, one source said.

As predicted, the primary gas market effect of Tropical Storm Fay was to suppress power generation demand in Florida with both cooling rains (highly welcomed in a severe drought area despite some flooding) and electric service outages. The storm’s projected tracking had it going offshore again around the middle of Florida’s Atlantic coast Wednesday, moving to the north and then making its third landfall a little to the south of the Florida-Georgia border, where it was expected to traverse the southwest corner of Georgia into Alabama, thus suppressing a great deal of cooling load in the Southeast.

Another system about 950 miles south-southwest of the Cape Verde Islands had medium potential for development, the National Hurricane Center said.

With Fay no longer a threat to its offshore operations, Shell Oil said Tuesday it had begun redeployment of evacuated personnel expected to be back to back to near-normal staffing levels by the end of the day. There was no impact to Shell-operated production, the company added.

The South is already pretty cool by mid-August standards, with almost no highs above the upper 80s predicted for Wednesday. Midwest temperatures will continue to stagnate with little change from moderate conditions.

PG&E issued a systemwide low-inventory OFO (see Transportation Notes) despite much of its service area not being expected to get above the mid 80s Wednesday. For that reason Malin and the PG&E citygate rose less than a nickel.

Florida Gas Zone 3 recorded one of the largest Gulf Coast losses (nearly 15 cents) after Florida Gas Transmission ended an Overage Alert Day Tuesday.

A marketer in northern Florida said Fay was unlikely to be a very destructive storm by the time it gets to northern Florida where he is. At least his company expected to be actively trading again Wednesday. Obviously there is not much power generation load left in the state currently, he said. He was unsure of how hot it will get after the storm passes, but there should be “a whole lot of humidity,” he said.

The National Weather Service (NWS) six- to 10-day forecast for the Aug. 25-29 workweek calls for below-normal temperatures in nearly all of the South (except in most of the Florida peninsula, where only the southern end is expected to be below normal) as far as western Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas. All of West Virginia along with all but the northern ends of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio are also predicted to be in the below-normal category. NWS expects above-normal readings in New England along with northern New York state; and in a strip along the Canadian border from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to the northern end of Idaho. The above-normal area expands along the way to include most of the Rockies, desert Southwest, California and the eastern two-thirds of Oregon.

Stephen Smith of Stephen Smith Energy Associates is projecting a storage addition of 93 Bcf for the week ending Aug. 15; that was up slightly from a previous estimate of 91 Bcf. Looking further ahead, Citi Futures Perspective’s Tim Evans expects builds of 75 Bcf, 80 Bcf and 65 Bcf to be reported for the weeks ending Aug. 15, Aug. 22 and Aug. 29, respectively.

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