Daily Market Update September 20, 2017

Early Morning Update

The Oct17 natural gas contract is trading up $0.01 at $3.13.  Oct17 crude is up $0.57 at $50.05.

Summary

After October natural gas prices see-sawed throughout the day, support from warmer-than-normal weather outlooks appears to have run its course, as the prompt month settled at $3.122/MMBtu, down 2.4 cents on the day.  The 8-14 day outlook from the National Weather Service shows a significant dissipation of higher-than-average temperatures in the East compared to the 6-10 day outlook, with warm temperatures confined to the Southeast through the end of September.  The market is beginning to focus more on end-of-season storage levels, with expectations that the U.S. Energy Information Administration will report storage builds for the next two weeks greater than, both, last year and the five-year average.  According to the EIA, power burn declined 14% in the week to Sep.13 due to cooler weather and demand destruction from Hurricane Irma.  Industrial demand was down 1% week-over week, and exports to Mexico also slipped 3%.  The projected end-of-season level for natural gas storage inventories has been edging up lately, and now stands at 3.815 Tcf.

Market Update 092017