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Despite moderate warming getting under way across much of eastern North America and in the southern, northern and coastal sections of the West, cash prices, with the support of a prior-day screen gain of 4.4 cents, still managed to find enough weather-based load — particularly in the Rockies — to record increases at a large majority of points Wednesday.

Transco said it will be replacing mainline sections Wednesday through Saturday downstream of Station 35 near Houston. The work will be in a single-line section of its system, Transco said, and thus will isolate all points upstream of Station 35 from downstream points. Three meters will not be available during the outage, Transco said. It expected to keep FT services whole for shippers during the outage. See the bulletin board for further details.

The market could claim marginal increases in cooling load in the South as more sections of the region were forecast to start recording highs in the mid 80s or so Thursday. Nevertheless, fundamental underpinnings of this week’s rally were still difficult to detect Wednesday even as overall firmness remained prevalent.

With the post-weekend burst of cold in much of the East expected to begin fading Wednesday in some sections and relatively moderate conditions expected during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, prices fell at all points Tuesday. The 40.8-cent expiration-day spike by December futures a day earlier proved unable to sustain the post-weekend rally in most of the cash market.

Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is expected to announce Tuesday an oil and natural gas lease sale for eastern Utah, including sections of Desolation Canyon, White River, Diamond Mountain, Bourdette Draw and other lands in the Nine Mile Canyon region — home to Ancient Puebloan rock-art images and ruins.

Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is expected to announce Tuesday an oil and natural gas lease sale for eastern Utah, including sections of Desolation Canyon, White River, Diamond Mountain, Bourdette Draw and other lands in the Nine Mile Canyon region — home to Ancient Puebloan rock-art images and ruins.

Getting a boost from the prior-day futures advance of 12.6 cents and mild support from slowly rising cooling load in eastern sections of the South, most of the cash market recorded gains Thursday. A large majority of them were small, but Rockies and El Paso’s San Juan-Bondad pool saw much larger upticks.

Spot gas prices were up — but relatively moderately outside some sections of the West — at most points Monday as traders returned to their offices to find Tropical Storm Edouard had sprung up offshore southeast Louisiana during the preceding afternoon. In fact, the big rally Monday that had been predicted going into the weekend (see Daily GPI, Aug. 4) due to forecasts of major heat in much of the U.S. was rapidly fizzling with prices tending to retreat as trading proceeded, a couple of sources said.

The midweek buildup of heat in many sections of the U.S. and Eastern Canada was able to overcome further prior-day screen softness in spurring rebounds in most of the cash market Thursday. However, it’s highly unlikely that gains will continue Friday after a very bearish storage report led to a steep plunge in August natural gas amid another meltdown day in Nymex’s energy futures complex.