Unable

A continuing widespread heat wave and news of a new tropical disturbance east of the central Bahamas proved unable to sustain Wednesday’s overall price increases, resulting in Thursday numbers ranging from flat to down as much as 30 cents. Rockies/Pacific Northwest and California points were most resistant to softening.

West Texas Gas experienced a mechanical failure at its Davis Plant, Questar said Friday. The unavailability of the processing plant for most of Friday’s gas day left Questar unable to deliver to TransColorado at the Greasewood delivery point, so Questar cut Greasewood nominations to elapsed pro rata levels in Cycle 3 Friday. Questar said Davis repairs were expected to be completed and nominations back to normal by Saturday’s gas day. The incident occurred on the heels of Questar announcing a March 7-11 maintenance outage at Davis Plant that would also have the effect of suspending deliveries to TransColorado (see Daily GPI, Feb. 25).

Pacific Gas & Electric did not extend a high-inventory OFO beyond Wednesday.

Plagued by an array of bearish fundamental and technical factors, the natural gas futures market continued a slow, methodical grind lower Tuesday as calculated scale-down, end-user buying matched up with commercial and speculative selling activity. After an early rally failed to attract much support, the September contract shuffled lower throughout the session to finish at $5.373, down a half-cent for the day.

Due to pipeline replacement on the East Line, MRT is unable to accept nominations through Aug. 9 that result in physical receipts from the NGPL interconnect in Clinton County, IL for delivery to any on-system point.

While August natural gas futures on Friday were unable to maintain Thursday’s rally, the prompt month was able to hold on to most of its gains. August closed down 1.8 cents at $6.134 while September futures dropped less than a penny to settle at $6.191.

Although hot weather fundamentals continued to get a little stronger Friday, they were unable to overcome the negative market influences of the usual slump in industrial load over a weekend combined with the previous day’s bearish storage report and large screen decline.

For the cash gas market, apparently the moderate screen weakness on Wednesday trumped a small increase in hot weather Thursday. Prices for Friday flow ranged from flat or slightly higher at some points in the West to down nearly 20 cents.

Unable to follow up on their whopping 27.6-cent rally on Tuesday, August natural gas futures spent Wednesday shaving off some of the gain ahead of Thursday morning’s natural gas storage report for the week ended July 2. The prompt month traded as low as $6.335 before settling at $6.37, down 5.4 cents on the day.