A flat Waha was the sole exception to continued price increases Friday. Eastern quotes especially saw strong gains as spreading hot weather that promises to stick around for a while raised power generation demand at a time when gas is competitively priced against other fuels. A 61.7-cent screen spike on the day before contributed extra support to the cash market.

Friday’s upticks ranged from a little less than a nickel to nearly 70 cents. As indicated by Waha’s flat showing, western markets tended to see most of the smallest gains. Although hot weather would continue in much of the interior West, the coast and Pacific Northwest are reveling in cool temperatures that dampen overall regional demand.

The Southern California border was able to rise a little more than a nickel despite SoCalGas issuing a high-linepack OFO (see Transportation Notes). Meanwhile, on the other side of the U.S. Florida Gas Transmission kept an Overage Alert Day in effect through at least Friday.

The lack of change at Waha in an otherwise stronger market may have seemed mysterious, but one source speculated that it resulted from declines in intrastate Texas load as a minor cooldown sets in. Houston was expected to fall short of reaching 90 degrees from Friday through Tuesday, while the high in the Dallas-Fort Worth area was forecast to retreat from the mid 90s Friday to the 90-degree area Saturday.

Rising heat levels in the Northeast are being reflected in gas deliveries to New York City. Transco Zone 6-NYC nominations for Friday totaled 1,487,000 MMBtu, according to analysis by Bentek Energy (https://intelligencepress.com/features/bentek/). Although that was down by 5,000 MMBtu from the day before, it was a whopping 87,000 MMBtu above the point’s month-to-date average of 1,400,000 MMBtu/d.

The transition to warmer weather would be especially breathtaking for Buffalo. Following a Friday high in the upper 70s, the city was predicted to record peak temperatures in the low 90s Saturday. Heat was the story in the Midwest also, where citygates tended to climb by an average of nearly half a dollar. Highs around 90 were in the weekend forecast for Chicago and Detroit.

ANR provided further evidence of the storage glut in telling all Rate Schedule DDS and MBS customers that by July 31 they must reduce their inventories by 65% from their June 14 allocated storage balance. “This action is necessary due to the significantly high levels of current inventory,” the pipeline said (see Transportation Notes).

Nearly a week after the first tropical storm of the 2006 Atlantic hurricane season formed, the tropics were relatively quiet. “Several disturbances have moved off the African coastline during the course of this past week, quite active for June standards,” said The Weather Channel. However, it did not expect organization by any of the disturbances.

A Northeast LDC buyer said it would heat up quite a bit in his area over the weekend. “We’ll have zero market” and will just be putting gas into storage for the most part, he said, adding that the utility backed off from the level of day-to-day purchases it had been making during the week. The heat will go down a bit early this week but stay a little above normal through next weekend, he added.

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