Happy New Year! Welcome to the return of RiteRate’s daily natural gas market update. Each day, a member of the team provides a quick recap on market moves and headlines to help you make more informed natural gas decisions. If you have questions on any of the content covered, refer to our Natural Gas 101 section for more details.
NYMEX Natural Gas Futures Contract Prices continued to fall today as warm weather model paired with a delayed Freeport LNG return in the later half of the month was enough to push prices down to the US$4/MMBtu mark for the first time since February of last year. The prompt month February 2023 contract settled down $0.487 at $3.988, and it was red on the screen for all months following.
Fundamentals Weather continues to be the driving factor in prices, a fact seen especially last Thursday following the U.S. Energy Information Administration’ (EIA) weekly Lower-48 Storage report. Although the actual number saw a storage withdrawal of 213 billion cubic feet compared to the estimated 201 Bcf (quite bullish), prices continued to fall. A trend has been identified over the past few months however, with the second half being significantly colder than the first. If wintery conditions appear past the 15th, of this month, the market will surely see a large reversal. ~CL