Front of Natural Gas Forward Curve Up $1/MMbtu, But The Back Has Not Budged

On Friday, CME/NYMEX WTI Cushing crude oil for April delivery closed at $44.76/bbl, down more than $16/bbl, or about 27%, since New Year’s Day. The declines in natural gas and NGL prices were not quite as severe, but only because those commodities were hit harder than crude during 2019. Even before COVID-19 landed on the market, energy prices were already under pressure from continued record production levels from U.S. shale, weakening demand, a mostly mild winter and a general investor pall over all things carbon. The threat of a global coronavirus pandemic was all it took to push things over the edge. So now what? Of course, nobody knows. But we can contemplate what this all could mean for energy markets, based on what we’ve seen in recent market statistics and price behavior. So that’s what we’ll do in today’s blog.

It’s been a devastating few weeks for the natural gas market. Sure, Shale Era abundance was supposed to keep gas prices from skyrocketing — and it generally has. But seriously? Henry Hub gas sinking below $2/MMBtu — and staying there, in the depths of the winter heating season? Prices have stabilized a little in recent days as a few E&Ps announced cutbacks in capex and gas-focused drilling, but gas-storage levels are abnormally high, coal-plant retirements have trimmed opportunities for coal-to-gas switching, and any significant gains in LNG exports aren’t going to happen until this time next year. With all that, you’ve gotta ask — as we do in today’s RBN blog — how low could natural gas prices go? 

Way back in the spring of this year, propane prices were behaving themselves. Mont Belvieu values were high relative to the previous two years, but no higher than what they ought to be with crude oil up to the mid-$70s/bbl range, as it was back then. Yet, market players were uncomfortable. Production was flat, exports were strong, and inventories were not increasing fast enough to get balances where they needed to be by winter. At that point the market got nervous and started bidding the price of propane higher. When exports continued at high rates and it looked like $100/bbl crude was a real possibility, propane buyers went into a feeding frenzy, and by early October propane prices blasted to levels not seen in a decade. Then the market calmed down. Weekly inventory numbers from EIA started to look like they might be OK after all, exports backed off, and propane prices started to decline. That’s supposed to happen toward the end of heating season, not at the beginning. The frenzy soon turned into a rout in a counter-seasonal price move egged on by concern about the COVID-Omicron variant that saw propane collapsing by 35% over a five-week period. All that price action happened during the summer and fall, instead of during the winter, as it usually does. We just got ahead of ourselves. So, what happens next? That is what we will consider in today’s RBN blog, which is Part 2 of our Different Drum NGL blog series.