Daily Market Update October 15, 2019
Early Morning Update
The Nov19 natural gas contract is trading up $0.02 at $2.30. The Nov19 crude oil contract is down $0.19 at $53.40.
Summary
Pre-winter fear seems to be setting the tone in the natural gas market, as the monthly contracts within the Nov19-Mar20 strip all strengthened from Friday's close. The prompt month settled up 6.6 cents at $2.28/MMBtu, while December gained 10 cents day-over-day, posting the biggest gain of the monthly contracts within the strip. Colder weather in parts of the country fed the bullishness, with total U.S. demand up 1.6 Bcf/d from the previous day, averaging 68.9 Bcf/d on Monday, and is projected to continue to grow to 82.1 Bcf/d by Thursday. While gas demand has been slightly higher with cooling temperatures, yesterday's run-up still faces downward pressure from 91 Bcf/d worth of production and very healthy storage levels. This week’s storage report is expected to be, yet again, in the triple digits, and should completely erase the deficit to the five-year average. With large storage builds on tap for the next few weeks, end-of-season estimates are now well above 3.8 Bcf.