Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Temperature at NYMEX 95.5 °F, Natural Gas Futures Don't Care

97 °F tomorrow. We're looking for a 60 Bcf storage injection.. Get that and the market yawns on day two of the heatwave.
The storage report is not a big deal this week, the market wants to see what April production was, whether there was any follow-through on the slight decrease we saw for March and we won't get those numbers until the 29th.

The futures are changing hands at $2.519 in electronic trading. Compare that with this morning's exuberance.
Here was some of this morning's (8:16 a.m. CDT) blather, via Bloomberg:
...“The market is following the thermometer,” said Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at Price Futures Group in Chicago. “There’s no doubt that it’s a very hot start to the summer, and that’s turning out to be supportive for prices.”

Natural gas for July delivery rose 8.6 cents, or 3.4 percent, to $2.631 per million British thermal units at 9:07 a.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The futures advanced $2.679 per million Btu in earlier electronic trading, the highest intraday price since May 24. Gas fell to a 10-year intraday low of $1.902 on April 19.... 
Now I like Phil Flynn but sometimes it seems he's got the soundbites on autopilot. Here's Bloomberg's noon report:
Canada Natural Gas Falls Ahead of U.S. Storage Report Tomorrow
Canadian natural gas declined prior to the release of a U.S. government report on storage as forecasters predicted lower temperatures that may cut demand for the power-plant fuel.
July gas in Alberta fell 2.2 percent as MDA EarthSat Weather of Gaithersburg, Maryland said cooler-than-normal weather will prevail in the Northeast from June 25 to June 29. The Energy Department may report tomorrow that in U.S. stockpiles for the week ended June 15 increase 64 billion cubic feet, according to analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

“With tomorrow’s storage number we could see a lot of activity around that, so there could be some hesitation ahead of that report,” Eric Bickel, an analyst at Summit Energy Services in Louisville, Kentucky, said in a telephone interview....MORE