Outlook

Natural gas, bring it on! That captures the current outlook of California’s energy planners, who are counting on gas supplies to continue to be plentiful and low-priced in North America.

February natural gas reacted to a weakening weather outlook and retreated under $3 again Tuesday. There remains little indication that the storage surplus will stop widening anytime soon, and traders look for continuing weakness. At the close February had fallen 7.0 cents to $2.941 and March had given up 8.0 cents to $2.970. February crude oil rose 93 cents to $102.24/bbl.

The outlook for natural gas, crude oil and refined products pipelines looks good for 2012, according to three separate reports released last Wednesday by Fitch Ratings. Fitch based its conclusions on recent past performance in the sector, which it views as stable.

The outlook for natural gas, crude oil and refined products pipelines looks good for 2012, according to three separate reports released Wednesday by Fitch Ratings. Fitch based its conclusions on recent past performance in the sector, which it views as stable.

Shale natural gas has dramatically transformed the outlook for U.S. energy supplies and is having “profound” economic impacts on creating jobs and stimulating growth, as well as bolstering tax revenue and reducing consumer energy costs, according to a study by IHS Global Insight.

Nearly all of the cash market remained in a downhill slide Monday as mild to cool weather dominated the overall outlook, and cold conditions returning in a couple of regions proved unable to generate enough heating load at their associated pricing points. The restoration of industrial demand from its normal weekend hiatus had essentially no bullish impact.

Hardly any area can claim to be as much as “warm” any more, but generally seasonable temperatures dominating the near- to intermediate-term weather outlook early in the fledgling heating season resulted in dropping prices across the board Friday. The weekend decline of industrial demand and the bearish nature of the previous day’s storage report were additional market depressants.

The outlook for oil output from the Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas is strong enough to cause analysts at Wood Mackenzie to predict that it will rival the Bakken Shale by 2015 as North America’s leading tight-oil producer.

The overall weather outlook remains mild to cool, but overnight lows in the 30s and 40s in parts of the Northeast, Rockies and Canada may have been enough to pull the cash market out of its recent slide Tuesday. Certainly the futures drop of 4.9 cents a day earlier didn’t contribute anything to the cause.