NGI Weekly Gas Price Index

The weekly change in spot futures has a way of correctly forecasting the direction in the NGI Weekly Spot Gas Average for the following week, and this week was no exception. Last week, the February contract fell a stout 43.9 cents and for the week ended January 13 the NGI Weekly Spot Gas Average gave up 33 cents to $3.22.

Stock market devotees often refer to the “January effect” where if the market can advance during January, it is likely to post gains for the entire year. There are still several weeks left in January, but if there is a “January effect” for natural gas prices, it will have to pull prices out of an initial hole. The NGI Weekly Spot Gas Average fell 8 cents to $3.55 on warmer than normal temperatures in a number of areas around the country, and gains in the Northeast and Southeast were able to partially offset broader losses of 20 cents or more at most market points.

For the holiday-shortened trading week physical natural gas managed to keep on trucking higher as nearly all sections of the country recorded about a dime gain. The only region of the nation not in the plus column was the Northeast, and at the end of the three-day trading week the NGI National Weekly Spot Gas Average had added 11 cents to $3.63.

Natural gas sellers got their Christmas presents early when weekly prices reached $3.92 for the week ending Dec. 16, but a week later the grinch emerged to take some of those gains back. The NGI Weekly National Spot Gas Averaged fell 40 cents to $3.52, and only a handful of points traded unchanged or in the black.

Weekly natural gas prices for the week ended Dec. 17 followed the cue of futures from the previous week and closed higher, but the market was sharply divided, with triple digit gains in the Northeast offsetting broader declines in Midwest Market Zones and Producing Zones.

Oh what a week it was, but the half-dollar weekly natural gas cash gains shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise to those who noted that January futures bounded higher by a stout 40 cents during the previous week. With chilly winter temps now on hand for much of the country, further strengthening is likely in the forecast.

Just when the natural gas cash gains for the short week ended Nov. 23 looked like they were going to be hard to beat, the market moves for the week ended Dec. 2 proved even greater.

It may have been a short three-day trading week, but you would never have known it from the size of the weekly gains. All but one point followed by NGI romped higher by double-digits, and the NGI Weekly Spot Gas Average jumped 41 cents to $2.70.

Weekly traders were able to shrug off another backbreaking rise in natural gas storage and instead concentrated on the arrival of the first shot of a winter-like chill for the week ended Nov. 18. That was enough to send both futures and cash higher by double-digits and the NGI Weekly Spot Gas Average vaulted 24 cents to $2.29.