Daily Market Update November 18, 2019
Early Morning Update
The Dec19 natural gas contract is trading down $0.09 at $2.60. The Dec19 crude oil contract is down $0.42 at $57.30.
Summary
On Friday, the December 2019 NYMEX natural gas futures price ticked up 4.1 cents to settle the day at $2.688/MMBtu. Earlier this month, we saw temperatures that we had not seen since March of this year, leading to a significant run-up in natural gas demand levels. However, after the first bite of cold this month, weather forecasts have moderated, bringing total U.S. demand back down, especially for heating demand in the res-comm sector. Due to the frigid temps, the EIA reported its final injection into storage of just 3 Bcf, which was much smaller than, both, last year and the five-year average benchmarks, 30 Bcf and 42 Bcf, respectively. Weather forecasts have moderated over the weekend, showing most of the cooler-than-normal temps retreating from the majority of the country, and warmer-than-normal temps returning to the western half of the country. The eastern half of the country looks to be fairly normal into the beginning of December, which could mean a little more relief for heating demand. U.S. dry production remains at healthy levels, averaging just over 92.0 Bcf/d so far for November, just slightly lower than the record set at the beginning of the month.