Virtually all eastern points, along with the Permian Basin/Waha market, yielded to weak weather fundamentals and expectations of another large advance in storage injections by dropping about a dime or slightly more Tuesday. However, a spreading West Coast heat wave kept Rockies/San Juan/Pacific Northwest numbers and those related to the Northern California market strongly on the rise.

A sluggish June futures contract that meandered from barely lower in the morning to barely higher in the afternoon had little impact on cash except in the intra-Alberta market, which was just a couple of pennies down, according to a marketer who added that Calgary-area temperatures in the 70s (F.) were “just great.”

Not seeing any screen guidance, eastern cash traders had to go with what they knew, which was that unseasonably cool weather in the Midwest and Northeast (and reaching as far south as Houston Tuesday) wasn’t cold enough to generate significant heating load. And the South, which last week had looked poised to deliver on some long-awaited summer air conditioning load, is now ranging from mild to moderately cool.

“Our intrastate [Texas] demand is in the toilet because of these moderate temperatures,” said a Houston-based trader. Electric utility load was close to non-existent Tuesday, he added.

Non-western numbers are almost certain to stay depressed today because of the “super-bear pill in storage that will have to be swallowed,” a marketer said. If another 100 Bcf-plus injection report is issued by AGA as so many anticipate, he said, “it will make those worries we had early this year about reducing the year-on-year [storage] deficit in competition with rising power generation load seem laughable.”

Though weak in the East, weather fundamentals were a major driver of western markets. High temperatures in the 80s, 90s and even 100s are ranging from Arizona to as far north as Washington state, a forecasting service said. California border-PG&E and PG&E citygates were near parity with triple-digit gains into the low $9.40s, while border-SoCal rose more than 60 cents and Malin was up nearly a quarter.

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