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Rather improbably, since cooling demand remains moderately subpar for early July outside the western U.S. and a holiday flow date was involved, prices rose in most of the cash market Tuesday. A few points that were flat to down about 15 cents extended a recent trend of mixed price movement nearly every day.

Despite still having a fairly plentiful amount of cooling load outside the Northeast, Pacific Northwest and California coast, cash prices fell at most points Thursday. They succumbed to a 7.4-cent retreat by July futures a day earlier and the fact that only the South, desert Southwest and parts of inland California are due to see temperatures go above the 80s Friday.

Although continuing moderate weather almost everywhere outside the mountain areas of the West and bearish expectations of another subpar storage pull made it seem unlikely, the cash market achieved gains Wednesday at all but two points. One source could only speculate that there must have been some storage-futures spread purchases in play because he saw little serious heating load for Thursday except in parts of the West, Upper Plains and northern New England.

Cash prices slipped 5-30 cents on average outside the Rockies Thursday despite a substantial jump on the Nymex, a slightly larger than expected 7 Bcf net withdrawal from storage reported by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) and an expected cold front that will move into the Midwest on Friday. Rockies prices continued to rebound from extremely low levels earlier in the week.

FERC has issued a proposed rule that seeks to improve the coordination between the natural gas and electric industries by revising the agency’s regulations governing the standards for business practices and electronic communications between the two sectors.

Even as it eyes hundreds of millions of dollars of additional generation and transmission projects outside of California, Pacific Gas and Electric is going to “stick to its knitting,” which means bread-and-butter natural gas and electricity utility distribution, transmission and generation, according to remarks Tuesday by PG&E Corp. CEO Peter Darbee at the Merrill Lynch Global Power and Gas Leaders Conference in New York City.

Wednesday saw a repeat of Tuesday’s mixed pricing, and again moderate gains dominated the market. But outside the Midcontinent few points saw increases of a dime or more, and flatness was much more prevalent than before. Some heating load was developing in the Midwest, some cooling load remained in the desert Southwest and parts of inland California, and prices had a modicum of support from the screen’s nickel rise on Tuesday.

Even as it eyes hundreds of millions of dollars of additional generation and transmission projects outside of California, Pacific Gas and Electric is going to “stick to its knitting,” which means bread-and-butter natural gas and electricity utility distribution, transmission and generation, according to remarks Tuesday by PG&E Corp. CEO Peter Darbee at the Merrill Lynch Global Power and Gas Leaders Conference in New York City.

With air conditioning load staying on the relatively light side outside the desert Southwest, a 33.9-cent screen drop on Wednesday providing highly negative guidance, continued concerns over storage injection space dwindling quickly, and excess supply issues in the West, it was hardly surprising when the cash market experienced double-digit drops across the board Thursday.