EIA Reports Robust Storage Build As Winter Weather Takes It’s Time

The natural gas futures contract for the prompt month barreled a net ~$1.00 (26%) higher in the past 12 days as the potential for prolonged production shut-ins in the Gulf of Mexico after Hurricane Ida amplified already-heightened supply fears in both the U.S. and international gas markets. The blistering price action sent the CME/NYMEX Henry Hub October futures contract soaring on Wednesday to an intraday high above $5/MMBtu and a settle of $4.914/MMBtu, the highest during September trading since 2008, while the prompt December and January contracts settled above $5/MMBtu for the first time in years. Prices at European and Asian gas/LNG hubs have similarly rallied this summer to multi-year or even all-time highs. Offshore Gulf gas production has since begun to recover, slowly, after the Ida-damaged Port Fourchon in Louisiana, the base of offshore oil and gas operations, reopened over the Labor Day weekend, but the bulk of it remains offline as power outages and other operational challenges persist. The shut-ins are exacerbating an already tight market, marked by record LNG exports, lackadaisical production growth, and a growing inventory deficit compared with year-ago and five-year average levels. Those underlying fundamentals will remain a trigger point for price spikes well after Ida-related shut-ins recover. Today, we discuss where the gas market stands heading into the final months of the injection season and the implications for winter gas pricing.

CME/NYMEX Henry Hub gas futures prices are currently struggling to stay above $2.00/MMBtu in the face of milder weather and record high production (closing up slightly at $2.038/MMBtu yesterday February 3, 2016). The market is on edge and at the mercy of daily weather forecast revisions that may signal further downside for prices. At the same time gas demand from power generation could increase in response to lower prices. To help navigate these volatile market conditions, we’ve teamed up with Criterion Research to develop the daily NATGAS Billboard: Natural Gas Outlook report. In today’s blog, we highlight specific features of the report and what they tell us about the market.

Yesterday  (November 19, 2015) the Energy Information Administration (EIA) published its first official weekly natural gas storage report in its new five-region format indicating an injection of 15 Bcf over the past week for a total U.S. inventory of exactly 4 Tcf. The new methodology and reporting format is a vast improvement in the granularity and clarity of government natural gas storage inventory data. But it also potentially moves the target for the slew of industry analysts who lose sleep trying to predict it each week. How the changes impact EIA inventory data and the ability of analysts to predict that data will become clearer in the coming weeks and months. But we got more clues this week as the EIA released dual versions of last week’s report on Monday showing significant differences leading up to launch of the new report on Thursday. Today we compare the results of the old versus new methodology.