Substantive

The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) is warning Pittsburgh officials that several portions of the city’s drilling ordinance are incompatible with Act 13, the state’s omnibus Marcellus Shale law.

Current weather didn’t seem cold enough to justify the substantive gains realized Tuesday at nearly all points as many — but not all — traders returned to their offices from the Christmas holiday weekend. They may have been stocking up a bit in looking forward to the first week of January, when some predict a boost in heating load from the return of cold weather.

Relatively cool weather in most of North America has yet to translate into substantive heating load increases; a tropical storm threat remains nonexistent and likely to stay that way through the final two months of the 2011 Atlantic season; and a screen drop of 8.1 cents Friday kept downward pressure on the cash market. The return of industrial load from its weekend decline provided weak market support.

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 Energy Information Administration (EIA), academia, industry and analysts on Tuesday continued to question why the New York Times (NYT) relied on misleading, outdated information — and failed to contact key resources — before publishing damning articles about the U.S. shale gas industry.

Prices declined, mostly by double digits, across the board Thursday as a relative lack of substantive cooling demand combined with the previous day’s 7.1-cent dip in July futures to bring bearish pressure on the cash market.

Seemingly unable to make up its mind about how substantive recent weather-based demand is, most of the cash market reversed direction for a third straight day Wednesday in chalking up small gains at nearly all points.

Cold weather trends managed to sustain a substantive cash rally into a second straight day for the first time in more than a week Thursday. Even a 3.4-cent retreat by December futures a day earlier failed to keep prices from rising by double digits at most points again.

Nearly all of the cash market again saw substantive upticks Tuesday, drawing support from a 22.5-cent spike by July futures a day earlier and a fairly large amount of cooling demand from hot weather across most of the southern half of the U.S. Although chances of storm development were being discounted, some traders may have considered a low-pressure area in the Atlantic Ocean as an additional bullish factor.