Daily Market Update February 26, 2018

Early Morning Update

The Mar18 natural gas contract is trading up $0.03 at $2.66.  The Apr18 crude contract is down $0.25 at $63.30.

Summary

On Friday, the NYMEX natural gas futures price for March dropped slightly by 0.9 cents on the day to settle at $2.625/MMBtu. The cold weather has subsided for the eastern half of the country, and temperatures are forecasted to remain in the normal to above-normal temperature range through the beginning of March. Colder-than-normal temperatures in the west appear to linger a little while longer into the 11-15 day forecasts. Due to the warmer temperatures in the East, the heating demand for natural gas has remained rather bearish, with only a slight uptick this morning due to an increase in ResComm demand in the Northeast. The EIA reported that overall U.S. demand for natural gas for the week that ended February 21st was down 14%, at 74.8 Bcf/d. The Dominion Cove Point LNG export facility is preparing for its start-up at the end of March, and has begun production for its first export. This facility is designed to run 24/7, and has the capability to produce up to 8.3 million gallons of LNG daily.

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