Fundamentals

Natural gas and crude futures continued to sink on Wednesday as bullish fundamentals for each commodity remained elusive. August natural gas declined by 7.6 cents to close at $3.353 while August crude futures plummeted $2.79 to close at $60.14/bbl.

The inflection point in U.S. gas market fundamentals likely will be realized this month, and the market will become increasingly undersupplied through the spring of 2010, energy analysts said Wednesday.

With overall weather fundamentals strengthening only marginally, prices continued to fall at a slight majority of points Monday.

Other than slightly warmer trends in the South, weather fundamentals were still light for the gas market as a whole. But as a couple of sources had predicted, the previous day’s 41.4-cent spike by futures was able to propel most points to double-digit gains Tuesday. But continuing issues with excess supply caused a few western locations to be as much as about a nickel lower.

Despite modestly supportive prior-day futures, the cash market acknowledged the general bearishness of weather fundamentals in falling at nearly all points Tuesday. The remote threat Monday of an early-season tropical disturbance in the Gulf of Mexico had pretty much disappeared a day later.

After appearing to ignore bearish weather fundamentals in registering price gains at all or nearly all points for nearly a week and a half, the cash market had finally shown signs of cracking Wednesday with mostly small losses at a majority of points. The price dam broke Thursday as substantive double-digit losses occurred across the board.

Abundant supplies and weakening demand fundamentals have November gas futures trading around $6.70, but U.S. gas would have to get cheaper in order to compete in a liquefied form on the world market, according to Wood Mackenzie’s Ed Kelly.

Abundant supplies and weakening demand fundamentals have November gas futures trading around $6.70, but U.S. gas would have to get cheaper in order to compete in a liquefied form on the world market, according to Wood Mackenzie’s Ed Kelly.

Shifting global gas supply and demand fundamentals have moved Kitimat LNG Inc. to revise its plans for a liquefied natural gas (LNG) import terminal to instead construct an export terminal near Kitimat, British Columbia (BC), on the Bish Cove site where it had planned to construct the import facility.