Mostly

Despite a large supply of ethane in the Appalachian Basin and no nearby place to put it, several projects to ship the commodity out of the region are challenged by the complexities of the marketplace, according to several project sponsors.

Prices again showed little change from flat in a large majority of cases Thursday, but this time they tended to be mostly a little higher instead of the other way around as on the day before. Although some regions will see slightly warmer weather over the next couple of days or so, crisp and cool fall conditions appear to be pretty well established by now.

Battered by negative influences seeming to come from all directions — mostly mild to chilly (but not particularly cold) weather, weak prior-day futures, storage injection capacity growing ever tighter and any tropical storm threat to Gulf of Mexico production deemed unlikely for the rest of the season — the cash market fell at nearly all points Thursday.

With weather, futures, the weekend factor and lack of tropical threat appearing mostly bearish, it wasn’t quite clear how a substantive portion of the cash market managed to achieve small rebounds Friday. But flat to moderately higher numbers showed up at a majority of points, primarily in the Midcontinent/Midwest, Gulf Coast and Rockies.

The two major credit rating agencies Thursday reacted mostly positively to $500 million in unsecured debt for El Paso Corp.’s pipeline partners unit, affirming its “B” ratings and designating the outlook as “positive.”

Prices continued to rise by mostly small amounts at a large majority of locations Thursday. There was no support from moderate weather in most regions, and the previous day’s prompt-month futures gain of 0.2 cent wasn’t much of a cash market booster. But the acceleration of Atlantic tropical activity — including Tropical Storm Nate possibly entering the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) production area — undoubtedly weighed on traders’ minds.

FERC has approved mostly compression expansions for Dominion Transmission Inc. (DTI) in western Pennsylvania and for Tennessee Gas Pipeline in western Massachusetts.

Price gains were virtually across the board Wednesday and were larger than the prior day’s mostly minuscule upticks. Cooling load is recovering in many areas from its slump during the first two-thirds of August, and Tuesday’s 10.4-cent increase by September futures was an additional bullish factor.

The Northeast rejoined the overall market in recording mostly moderate losses Tuesday. Heat levels across most of the southern third of the U.S. are remaining somewhat onerous, but highs in the 80s or less continue to dampen cooling load.