Miserably

Despite failing miserably in their prior $8/MMBtu gas price predictions for this summer and fall (see Daily GPI, June 29), analysts at Raymond James & Associates said in their “Stat of the Week” that once the weather returns to normal, bullish gas market fundamentals will again push prices sharply higher. As a result, the analysts have raised their gas price forecast for 2005 yet again to $6.65 from $6.25. They also bumped up their crude oil price forecast for the fourth quarter to $40/bbl from $36.

Having characterized the nation’s major energy firms as “failing miserably” to deliver promised increased cash flows from merchant energy businesses, most of the private-sector energy companies were blistered last Thursday by critical Standard & Poor’s analysts who conducted a conference call on the global utilities/energy merchant sector. The same firms with aggressive diversification plans five years ago, today for the most part, are “desperately trying to unwind” those businesses in response to a severe liquidity and capital crisis, triggered by the plunge in their stock prices, the analysts said.