Despite only the most marginal firming of weather fundamentals and a softer screen during the morning, nearly all cash points ranged from flat to about a dime higher Tuesday. Most softening was fairly negligible except for double-digit drops at Sumas, Stanfield, Malin and intra-Alberta, which were due largely to cool Pacific Northwest weather, a NOVA tolerance change Sunday to 0/-20% and a constraint on PG&E Gas Transmission-Northwest deliveries (see Transportation Notes).

Weather-related demand remains depressed in the Northeast, so a regional trader was surprised to see prices there flat to a few cents higher Tuesday. That could partially be attributable to returning industrial load following the long holiday weekend, but that also was true of other markets, he said. “I have to figure many traders are putting some stock in the potential threat of Tropical Storm Erin, because there’s not much else around to explain the price upticks.”

Others found little justification for Erin as a price booster, however. The storm was poorly organized and expected to pass “well north” north of the Leeward Islands (the northern half of the curving Lesser Antilles chain between Puerto Rico and Venezuela), the National Weather Service said in its 5 p.m EDT update Tuesday. After that the anticipated west-northwest to northwest track would take Erin ashore somewhere in the Southeast on the Atlantic shore side.

Otherwise temperatures were getting a tad warmer in much of the U.S., but still remained generally mild for summer except in the desert Southwest. A near-solid week of rain has greatly dampened air conditioning load from Texas through much of the Southeast. Katy saw a short-supply squeeze near the end, according to a Gulf Coast trader, “but nothing out of the ordinary. No one was really pushing the market around.”

A Rockies marketer reported a similar late squeeze near the end of trading at Opal, but then prices retreated again in the very last deal she did.

PG&E citygates topped border-SoCalGas by 6 cents in monthly indexes and is slightly increasing its unusual lead in the early September aftermarket. One western source thinks the gate will lose its premium again when agricultural processing activity declines in Northern and Central California as harvests draw to a close. Also, the fact that SoCalGas is so far ahead on storage injections helps explain the current relative border weakness compared with the gate, he said.

More than one western source confessed to having trouble getting used to writing or typing a “1” in the dollar place of their price quotes again. All San Juan/Rockies/Pacific Northwest points are trading below $2 now, while Malin just barely managed to avoid joining the group.

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