Weekly Energy Market Update

Please visit the Direct Energy Business online customer education center, known as Energy Insights, to view my Weekly Energy Market Update video for April 22, 2013. Receive weekly updates that are sent right to your email inbox: click here to subscribe.

The following is a summary of last week’s market activity and the market outlook:

  • Natural gas rallied again with a 19-cent gain on Thursday, following a bullish storage report (the storage refill season is off to a very slow start) and overall cold weather. May futures closed on Friday, April 22 at $4.40 — the highest Prompt Month settle since July 20, 2011. At $4.52, the 12-month Strip is above all Calendar Strips through 2016. Calendars ’14 and ’15 are both at $4.40 for the first time since December 2011 and November 2012, respectively.
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Energy Buying Strategies in a Volatile Market

Per this week’s Energy Market Update, I have provided some in-depth energy buying strategies in the current volatile market. Briefly, a month ago NYMEX futures broke out of their range and exceeded $3.60 per MMBtu for the first time in four months.  A month later prompt month gas futures are $4.20 for the first time since July 2011. Why, you ask? The primary reason: March was COLD. Heating demand depleted storage inventories to levels not seen since the last time gas was over $4.10. But the long-term picture is not as grim. Gas futures for 2014 are up significantly less than the near-term, and 2015 and 2016 are down. The bottom line is that the rally is being driven by near-term fundamentals while long –term prices have stabilized, thanks to shale reserves resulting in a much flatter forward curve.

The details are in the numbers below
                                             Prices as of 4/12/13         Change since 3/7/13
Prompt month natural gas    4.22                                  +0.64
12-Month Strip                      4.37                                  +0.52
Calendar 2014                      4.26                                  +0.15
Calendar 2015                      4.27                                   -0.03
Calendar 2016                      4.36                                   -0.09
($ per MMBtu)

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Weekly Energy Market Update

Please visit the Direct Energy Business online customer education center, Energy Insights, to view my Weekly Energy Market Update video for April 16, 2013. Receive weekly updates that are sent right to your email inbox.

The following is a summary of last week’s market activity and the market outlook:

  • Natural gas rallied again this week, with the Prompt Month ending the week at its highest level since July 2011. May natural gas futures settled on Friday, April 12 at $4.22. The curve continues to flatten, with Calendars 2014 ($4.26) and 2015 ($4.27) nearly the same and below the 12-month Strip ($4.37).

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Weekly Energy Market Update

Please visit the Direct Energy Business online customer education center, Energy Insights, to view my Weekly Energy Market Update video for April 8, 2013. Receive weekly updates that are sent right to your email inbox: click here to subscribe.

The following is a summary of last week’s market activity and the market outlook:

  • Natural gas futures had a strong rally on Friday, after trending downward earlier in the week. Friday’s 18-cent gain erased the 8-cent losses from Monday-Thursday. May futures finished the week at $4.12 — a high for the Prompt Month since August 2011.

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