Daily Market Update March 19, 2019
Early Morning Update
The Apr19 natural gas contract is trading up $0.03 at $2.88. The Apr19 crude oil contract is up $0.31 at $59.40.
Summary
The Apr19 natural gas futures contract continued its rise yesterday, adding 5.5 cents to settle at $2.85/MMBtu. In fact, all of the months though November have moved up at least five cents since Friday, while December rose 4.5 cents. However, there was not quite as much movement after 2019, with 2020 up just 1.7 cents, and the 2021-2025 calendar strips up less than a penny. With a very cold start to the month, total U.S. demand for natural gas in March has averaged 105.4 Bcf/d, 10.6 Bcf/d higher than last year at this time. Total U.S. demand fell 2.1 Bcf/d from yesterday to 96.2 Bcf/d, with demand from the Res/Comm sector making up a large part of this at 1.4 Bcf/d. With warmer temperatures in the forecasts for all of the country, demand is expected to drop another 7.6 Bcf/d over the next two weeks. Meanwhile, U.S. dry production over the past week continued to hover just under 86 Bcf/d, still struggling to get back to the all-time highs seen last November. It is anticipated that production will remain flat for at least the next two weeks.
Loading please wait...