Forward Look

It’s no surprise that natural gas couldn’t sustain $3 as the shoulder season got into full swing this week, with November forward prices averaging 7.3 cents lower at $2.74 between Sept. 23 and 29, according to NGI’s Forward Look.

October natural gas forward prices climbed as much as 7 cents between Sept. 16 and 22 as continuous power burn growth, strong cash prices and ongoing nuclear outages kept a firm grip on the market, even in the face of a relatively bearish storage report, according to NGI’s Forward Look.

The fall shoulder season may be just around the corner, but some unexpected maintenance events that cut both nuclear generation and production this week helped send natural gas October futures and forward prices up more than 10 cents on average from Sept. 9 to 15, NGI Forward Look shows.

Even though natural gas forwards prices were up just 2 cents on average between Sept. 2 and 8, the short holiday week proved to be quite jarring as a surprise storage report lit a fire under forward curves that had appeared to be settling into shoulder season in the days prior to its release, NGI Forward Look data shows.

September got off to a decidedly bearish start as a much larger-than-expected natural gas storage injection and the upcoming holiday weekend combined to pull natural gas forwards markets down by an average of more than 10 cents between Aug. 26 and Sept. 1, according to NGI’s Forward Look.

Unrelenting heat that is expected to continue well into September and a bullish storage injection combined to drive up natural gas forwards prices more than 20 cents on average between Aug. 19 and 25, according to NGI’s Forward Look.

After sitting relatively idle much of the week, natural gas forwards markets got a boost from a bullish storage report that helped send September forward prices up an average 7.6 cents between Aug. 12 and 18, according to NGI’s Forward Look.

After natural gas markets failed to bat an eye at last week’s historic storage withdrawal, it’s no surprise to see forwards markets plunge by double digits this week.

In a week that brought about a historically bullish natural gas storage report, forwards markets surprisingly shrugged off the news, sliding by an average 4.1 cents between July 29 and Aug. 3, according to NGI Forward Look.