Natural Gas Weekly Fundamental Analysis May 7 – 11, 2012, Forecast

Introduction: Natural gas is nevertheless a major commodity in its own right, which is used for everything from cooking food to heating houses during the winter. Natural Gas is growing much faster than either of its non-renewable fossil fuel competitors, oil and coal.

Do not miss the weekly U.S. gas inventories report. The figures are issued by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) every Thursday afternoon at 15:30 (released Friday at 15:30 if there was a U.S. bank holiday on Monday). Here’s a link to the latest EIA report. The main natural gas moving figure in there is the change in inventories from the previous week. When it comes to the gas inventories report, we’re talking about billions of cubic feet, Bcf for short.

When the actual change in inventories number is released, it is the deviation from the expected number that is really important. If the actual inventories figure shows a 24 Bcf rise when an 84 Bcf increase was expected, then that is actually positive for the price of natural gas. All else equal, the price of natural gas should rise after the release.

A barrel of oil has roughly 6 times the energy content of natural gas. If the fuels were perfect substitutes, oil prices would tend to be about 6 times natural gas prices. However, due to various market characteristics discussed briefly above and the ease of using oil, the price of oil has been following a pattern of 8-12 times that of natural gas. However that ratio has spiked dramatically since March 2009.

Weekly Analysis and Recommendation:

Natural Gas  ended the week at 2.265 after a recent report showed that many wells were being shut down or not developed at it was not economical to produce NG below 3.00

A late winter storm has helped push the price over 2.00 to reach back up to the mid 2.20 levels, as investors are hoping for a decrease in inventory.

NG earlier rose by as much as 4.85% to trade at a session high of USD2.365 per million British thermal units. 
The June contract traded at USD2.320 prior to the release of the U.S. Energy Information Administration report. 

The U.S. Energy Information Administration said in its weekly report that natural gas storage in the U.S. in the week ended April 27 rose by 28 billion cubic feet, compared to expectations for an increase of 31 billion cubic feet.

Working gas in storage was 2,576 Bcf as of Friday, April 27, 2012, according to EIA estimates. This represents a net increase of 28 Bcf from the previous week. Stocks were 840 Bcf higher than last year at this time and 857 Bcf above the 5-year average of 1,719 Bcf. In the East Region, stocks were 425 Bcf above the 5-year average following net injections of 20 Bcf. Stocks in the Producing Region were 325 Bcf above the 5-year average of 715 Bcf after a net withdrawal of 1 Bcf. Stocks in the West Region were 107 Bcf above the 5-year average after a net addition of 9 Bcf. At 2,576 Bcf, total working gas is above the 5-year historical range.

Historical:

High      5.13 January 2011

Low       2.2080 March 13, 2012

 

Economic Events: (GMT)

WEEKLY

• Natural Gas Weekly Update
  Release Schedule: Thursday between 2:00 and 2:30 p.m. (Eastern Time)
• Weekly Natural Gas Storage Report
  Release Schedule: Thursday at 10:30 (Eastern Time) (schedule)

Economic Highlights of the coming week that affect the Euro, GBP, CHF and the USD