Production Keeps Pressuring Natural Gas
We hope you all had a great July 4th holiday, and are happy to be back with our free natural gas analysis. Over the holiday week, we saw prices move solidly lower, a trend that continued today with the August contract settling another percent lower.
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We were all over this last week, with our Monday Natural Gas Weekly Report holding a slightly bearish sentiment for the week due to risk for cooling forecasts and very bearish seasonality along with record production levels.
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Prices did find some support off heat through the week, and burns did not loosen all that much around the July 4th. Traders were also looking for a smaller EIA injection last Friday to get prices moving, but the print hit our expectation perfectly and prices changed little into the weekend.
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Then over the weekend, we noticed some hotter medium-term trends that were canceled out by cooler long-term trends, not providing all that much support for natural gas prices today with only minimal net weekend GWDD additions (as seen below in our Morning Update).
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Clearly, much of the recent decline in prices has been due to lessening concerns about low storage levels thanks to production rising to record highs. Over the past couple of weeks, we have seen the H9/J9 March/April spread plummet, an indication that storage concerns are waning.
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Meanwhile, weather continues to keep the front of the strip propped up, with Q/U August/September flat on the day even as the whole strip declined.
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In our daily reports, we take a look at the natural gas balance, price action, spread movement, and weather changes, providing clients a holistic view of the natural gas market. Recently our ...
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