Bullish

Exploration in North America’s onshore remains in its earliest stages because producers are eyeing “tens of thousands” of locations for future drilling, Baker Hughes Inc. CEO Martin Craighead said Tuesday.

January natural gas finished flat Friday, but other months eased as traders don’t see any bullish factors and cite a technical trading objective 50 cents lower. January settled unchanged at $3.127 and February eased 0.3 cent to $3.174. January crude oil fell 34 cents to $93.53/bbl.

The recently bullish cash market carried over into Monday, with price gains across the board supported by pockets of weather-related demand and the previous Friday’s rise of 12.7 cents by June futures.

Spot prices saved their best for last — at least in the viewpoint of bullish traders — by making the strongest gains of last week virtually across the board on Friday. A large futures uptick a day earlier combined with increasing weather-based load in some areas to support the physical market.

April natural gas futures retreated Monday, but only after registering another eight-week high and keeping the bullish case intact. New high or not, short-term traders are suspicious and sense that a rise above $4.50 will be met with stiff selling. At the end of the day April futures had fallen 2.9 cents to $4.374 and May shed 4.2 cents to $4.448. May crude oil dropped $1.42 to $103.98/bbl.

Reporting record profits for all of last year and record fourth quarter production, Apache Corp. senior executives Thursday painted a bullish outlook for this year that includes moving ahead with its newly acquired Kitimat liquefied natural gas (LNG) export project in western Canada and stepping up production of the Permian Basin assets it acquired from BP plc.

Reporting record profits for all of last year and record fourth quarter production, Apache Corp. senior executives last Thursday painted a bullish outlook for this year that includes moving ahead with its newly acquired Kitimat liquefied natural gas (LNG) export project in western Canada and stepping up production of the Permian Basin assets it acquired from BP plc.

Is the latter half of January going to be extra-cold (quite bullish) or merely seasonable (somewhat bearish)? A lot of money could be riding on making the best strategic trading choices in such circumstances, and a few traders have indicated that they’re not sure what path to follow.

The bullish effect of a smidgen of extra cooling load and a rare boost from prior-day futures proved to have short effect in raising cash prices. After gains at virtually all points on Monday, flat to slightly higher numbers remained in a moderate majority Tuesday but were being infiltrated by several small losses.