Overnight

September natural gas is expected to open 6 cents higher Monday morning at $3.90 as near-term weather forecasts turn more supportive and traders discount the potential load destruction of Tropical Storm Cristobal. Overnight oil market rose.

September natural gas is set to open 3 cents lower Wednesday morning at $3.79 as modest changes in the near-term weather outlook are unable to lift prices. Overnight oil markets gained.

The expiring February futures contract is expected to open 9 cents higher Wednesday morning at $5.12 as once again forecasters nudge short- and medium-term weather forecasts cooler for the bulk of the country. Overnight oil markets were mixed.

As energy companies begin collecting production data from the few wells drilled so far in Ohio’s portion of the Utica Shale, a picture is starting to emerge that company executives and industry experts agree will determine how, where and when the play will ultimately be developed.

The overall weather outlook remains mild to cool, but overnight lows in the 30s and 40s in parts of the Northeast, Rockies and Canada may have been enough to pull the cash market out of its recent slide Tuesday. Certainly the futures drop of 4.9 cents a day earlier didn’t contribute anything to the cause.

July futures rose Friday as traders saw the day’s gains as part of a repositioning of the market following a Thursday overnight trade that plunged July to as low as $4.51 and a subsequent race back up that took July as high as $4.983.

Except for a sizeable number of flat to moderately higher locations in the West — where a cooling trend is taking overnight lows in the Rockies and Upper Plains back to either side of freezing — and elsewhere, Tuesday’s overall firmness didn’t last. Most of the cash market fell Wednesday due to a combination of a dearth of eastern weather-based load — in the form of either heat or substantive cold — and three successive previous days of futures weakness.

Several Northeast trading locations, mostly in New England, fell Monday despite freezing-or-less overnight lows forecast to persist into Tuesday. However, the rest of the market recorded substantive increases — nearly all in double digits — due to winter-like cold weather lingering into early spring, April futures strength on the preceding Friday and the return of industrial load from its normal weekend decline also contributed to overall upticks.

El Paso said Thursday it had experienced an overnight rupture on Line 1102 just north of the Amarillo Compressor Station in the Texas Panhandle. The line was shut in between the Amarillo and Dumas stations for investigation, which required the additional shut-ins of one receipt point and three delivery points. El Paso declared a force majeure. Due to the isolation of Line 1102 in this area, the pipeline said, no gas can be scheduled from Plains to locations north of the Amarillo station. Also, delivery locations north of the station were required to adjust their supply sources in Cycle 3 nominations for Thursday’s gas day to one of three receipt points in the Anadarko Basin area. In an updated notice prompted by customer inquiries about whether gas moving south into Amarillo was affected as well as gas moving north from the station, El Paso clarified that it is unable to schedule any gas in either direction through the rupture area.