Tropical Storm Bill was leaving relatively little shut-in offshore production in its wake Monday afternoon as it moved over the Louisiana coast. Meanwhile, flatness at the Chicago citygate and Dawn were the only significant exceptions in an overall stronger launch of the July aftermarket. Otherwise, points ranged from up about a nickel to nearly 40 cents higher. A majority of the gains were in the range of 10-20 cents.

It was hard to tell how much of the rally from Friday’s major cash weakness could be attributed to Bill’s influence, one source said. After all, warmer temperatures were starting to return in the Northeast and the lower Midwest following a weekend cooldown, and much of the interior West is downright hot again, he pointed out. The source also noted that the screen apparently was shrugging off the tropical storm, settling at slightly under a nickel higher.

According to the National Hurricane Center, the center of TS Bill was over Terrebonne Bay about 30 miles east of Morgan City, LA at 4 p.m. CDT and moving northeastward at nearly 10 mph. Sustained winds of 50 mph with gusts to 60 mph were reported by two automated stations south of Houma, LA as the storm reached landfall, NHC said. The agency discontinued a hurricane watch for part of the Louisiana coast and further reduced a tropical storm warning’s scope to the segment from Intracoastal City, LA to Pascagoula, MS.

Although not all reported back in a spot check, pipelines with offshore Louisiana connections indicated that production losses generally were small. The largest outages were reported by a Southern Union representative for Trunkline (150 MMcf/d) and Sea Robin (50 MMcf/d). A spokesman said Transco was seeing “very small amounts” of shut-ins that he estimated as totaling about 25 MMcf/d. And a Kinder Morgan representative said he was hearing of no shut-ins related to the storm on the NGPL system. Gulf South also reported no known shut-ins.

A few small producers may have shut down from the storm on Texas Eastern, a spokesman said, but he didn’t think any majors did so. “It was pretty much a non-event” to Gas Control, he said. An El Paso Corp. staffer had pretty much the same report for Tennessee, Sonat and ANR, calling impact “minimal.” One offshore platform was evacuated, he added, but it was not known whether its production was shut down since the platform could have been capable of remote operation.

Barney Congdon, a New Orleans-based spokesman for Minerals Management Service, said no shut-ins had been reported as of Monday morning and added, “I very seriously doubt there will be any. Basically, this has been a rapidly moving storm, and…it’s already about onshore now.” However, Congdon said MMS would be affected by the storm, which was dumping rain on an already saturated New Orleans. MMS offices there were to close at noon Monday so the 600 employees could return home. Congdon said the region had been inundated with rainfall for a couple of weeks, and with the latest storm, five inches of rain had already fallen in New Orleans. He said people working in the downtown area were being advised to move to higher ground.

Monday was almost certain to represent the peak of any outages, since the storm was expected to be well inland by the start of Tuesday’s gas day. Any wells that had been shut in likely would be getting turned back on Tuesday, a source said.

New York City-based Weather 2000 offered these storm comments: “On Sunday, the NHC [National Hurricane Center] got its act together, bypassed tropical depression classification, and immediately declared the formation of Tropical Storm ‘Bill.’ For those not following our preceding discussions, this storm may have appeared to ‘come out of the blue,’ because socio-politics comes into play as the NHC tends to be quick on the classification trigger when a storm is so close to the U.S., while it is usually lethargic for upgrades, et al, when a storm is well out to sea…

“However, the much bigger story of Bill will be its impact after landfall. Although not packing devastating hurricane winds or storm surge, the rainfall associated with Bill will be quite substantial. Long after losing its storm structure and tropical characteristics, Bill (or rather the remnants thereof) will yield flash flooding and trigger strong/severe thunderstorms throughout the Southeast, Tennessee Valley, Appalachians and Mid-Atlantic.”

Sources were unsure of where cash might go Tuesday. Any pyschological boost from Bill will have dissipated, one said, and its extensive rains are likely to dampen air conditioning load in the South. The West may continue to see gains because of its heat, he added.

A marketer agreed that the western market could remain modestly bullish, saying she saw Waha run up to the mid $5.10s in late deals following earlier quotes a little more than a dime lower. Permian Basin maintenance by El Paso is causing some supply constraints, she added.

However, price declines stand a good chance of starting as early as Tuesday in the Northeast, said a regional utility buyer. She reported “not seeing much power load” for Tuesday, which meant few if any gas-fired peaking generation units were likely to be activated. She and others anticipate fairly mild softness through Wednesday and then “a lot more softness” on Thursday, when trading will be done for four days over the holiday weekend.

According to a western utility staffer, this coming Thursday “could be very interesting.” In addition to the extra demand slump associated with a long weekend, “lots of traders will be gone already, and the storage report will have just come out.”

Saying that “hotter weather last week leads us to forecast a slowing in injection rates,” Lehman Brothers analyst Thomas Driscoll forecast a storage injection of 110 Bcf for the week ended June 27. The volume would compare to a 68 Bcf injection last year and a five-year average 77 Bcf. Kyle Cooper of Citigroup said his final estimation for the report is “a build between 104 and 114 Bcf.”

A couple of traders remarked Monday on how counterparty creditworthiness seems to be making a comeback. “There are not nearly as many marketers any more, although there are some new names,” said one. “They have slowly been trickling in for a little while. Some are new players, some are old with new names. But a good percentage of the new guys are producers. Old companies that used to turn the reins over to a marketer have decided to market their own gas. Producers are taking it back.”

“Credit has been less of an issue lately,” according to a California trader. “A lot of new companies formed. In many cases it is easier to start fresh than [to restore] one’s name and credit rating. New players have no black marks, and as long as they pass the test we can do business.”

Although July nominations could still be made up to 11:30 a.m. CDT Monday, bidweek was already effectively over except for scattered clean-up deals, according to several sources.

Chicago was “really a split market” for July, a producer said. “You had the business done earlier in bidweek in the $5.70s, and then on Thursday after the screen dropped more than 40 cents, you had business done in the $5.30s and there was really nothing much done in between those two levels.” He went on to report “a good deal of trading activity” at Consumers and MichCon for July as demand for storage gas picked up. “The thing about it is, though, that those two points traded on the 24th and the 25th and didn’t really trade later on in bidweek. If they had traded late on the 26th or the 27th, you would have seen some much lower numbers.”

A Midcontinent marketer quoted July deals in the low to mid $5.40s for ANR Southwest, but only in the high $5.00s for Panhandle Eastern. Timing was the reason for such a huge spread, she said; the ANR deals were done on Tuesday as bidweek got under way, while she traded Panhandle on Friday, a day after the screen’s expiration-day plunge.

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