Comfortable

Following repeated failed attempts to bust out to the upside earlier in the week, exhausted traders were comfortable with doing not much of anything in quiet trading on Friday. After trading lower in the overnight Thursday Globex session, December natural gas maintained a slim 14-cent range Friday before closing at $7.794, down 16.1 cents on the day and 9 cents lower than the previous week’s close.

There should be a comfortable natural gas supply and demand balance through 2011 in the Pacific Northwest, according to the latest consensus regional outlook published by the Northwest Gas Association, a trade organization of nine major interstate pipelines and distribution utilities in Idaho, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia.

There should be a comfortable natural gas supply and demand balance through 2011 in the Pacific Northwest, according to the latest consensus regional outlook published by the Northwest Gas Association, a trade organization of nine major interstate pipelines and distribution utilities in Idaho, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia.

Feeling rather comfortable with the market’s recent $6.500 to $7.500 trading range, natural gas futures traders on Monday put in another uneventful session as support held once again. After trading within a slim 15 cent range between $6.560 and $6.710 on Monday, June natural gas ended up closing at $6.696, down 7.9 cents on the day.

Natural gas futures continue to appear comfortable at their current price level as the April contract quietly went off the board Wednesday at $7.233, up 1.9 cents on the day. Likewise, May natural gas futures, which now take on prompt-month status, closed on Wednesday at $7.456, up 7.2 cents.

After maintaining and even building on Monday’s gains, natural gas futures traders on Tuesday were becoming more comfortable with labeling last week’s $6.450 a “bottom.” April natural gas on Tuesday put in a high of $7.22 before settling at $7.167, up 16 cents on the day and 52.1 cents for the week.

Outgoing FERC Chairman Patrick Wood on Wednesday said that he feels “very comfortable that we will get the amount of gas we need in…North America,” an amount that a 2003 National Petroleum Council (NPC) report to the U.S. Secretary of Energy “said we’ve got to have” (see Daily GPI, Sept. 26, 2003).

Mild weather throughout most of the North American continent continued to work its price-depressing magic Friday, augmented by day-earlier weakness in energy futures and to a lesser extent by the typical slump of industrial load over a weekend.

Although it did not provide formal earnings guidance for next year, TXU Corp. said it is “more comfortable” with full-year 2003 earnings estimates of about $2/share because of a planned stock sale and the completion of a recent sale of exchangeable subordinated notes. The company earned $3.78/share in 2001.