Perplexed

Possibly a little perplexed from the recent back-and-forth swings in natural gas futures values, traders on Monday kept the May contract in a tight range between $4.174 and $4.313 before it closed out the regular session at $4.262, up half of a penny.

Following last week’s bullish storage injection, energy analysts remained perplexed about this winter’s outlook for natural gas storage and its effect on winter prices. Raymond James analysts, running with the bulls, said the “big surprise” next winter will be a “resurgence” in industrial demand and a price return to 6:1 parity with oil. But energy analyst John Gerdes, still in a bearish mood Monday, noted that prices have hovered around $6-$7/MMBtu with no “noticeable” increase in industrial demand, and he remains convinced that gas prices will have to remain below $6 for at least a few months before there is significant upward movement.

Shooting higher in Access trading and again in the regular session, November futures on Wednesday morning broke through the psychological $7 level and kept on going.

Quite a few market observers were perplexed by the sudden sharp increase in natural gas futures prices Thursday after the EIA reported another relatively large weekly storage injection of 78 Bcf. The 16-cent increase in futures was even more surprising in light of the apparent discrepancy between EIA’s weekly estimated storage numbers and the actual storage numbers from EIA’s monthly data for earlier this year.

Last week’s sudden jolt upward in spot natural gas prices on anticipation of a cold winter was another indication of the “fickleness” of the market, according to the California Energy Commission’s chief natural gas watcher, Bill Wood, who was dismayed by the latest price swing last Tuesday.

This week’s sudden jolt upward in spot natural gas prices on anticipation of a cold winter is another indication of the “fickleness” of the market, according to the California Energy Commission’s chief natural gas watcher, Bill Wood, who was dismayed by the latest price swing Wednesday.

FERC staff intentionally avoided responding to technicalquestions about the proposed auction concept that were submitted byseveral gas industry groups prior to a workshop held earlier thisweek, a pipeline group representative charged.