Daily Market Update February 22, 2018

Early Morning Update

The Mar18 natural gas contract is trading down $0.01 at $2.65.  The Apr18 crude contract is up $0.32 at $62.00.

Summary

After settling as low as $2.55 last week, the March natural gas contract has been on an upswing this week, gaining more than 10 cents in the past two sessions.  The prompt month settled Wednesday at $2.659/MMBtu, up 4.3 cents day-over-day.  April was up 3.2 cents at $2.681, and all of the 2019-2024 calendar strips rose one to two cents.  Cold weather in the west pushed up day-ahead electric prices by almost $40, with the South Path-15 point in California clearing at $109.14/MWh for today.  Estimates for the weekly storage withdrawal to be reported by the U.S. Energy Information Administration this morning range from  116 to 131 Bcf, with a consensus built around 122 Bcf.  Natural gas storage stockpile currently stand at 1,884 Bcf, 433 Bcf (19%) below the five-year average, and 577 Bcf (23%) less than they were a year ago at this time.  If storage withdrawals are close to the five-year average for the remainder of the winter season, inventories will end up 25% less than normal, the second lowest end-of-season level since 2010.

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