Ferguson's Forecast: Oil, Gas Prices Drop 5 Percent

Oil prices fell 5 percent ($2.59/bbl) in trading Wednesday on the basis of a strong oil storage report showing ample U.S. crude oil supplies. As I write this on Thursday, oil is down another dollar. Natural gas prices continued their peculiar connection to oil by also falling 5 percent ($0.37/MMBtu) Wednesday with no gas news whatsoever. The price of oil remains well above the price of gas on an energy basis. Thursday?s gas storage report showed a rather large increase of 73 billion cubic feet for the week ending April 22 due to exceptionally mild weather. The increase was largely expected?I had forecast a somewhat larger storage build of 85 Bcf?and gas prices are currently unchanged as of Thursday morning despite the further drop in oil prices. Readers may recall that a few months ago I reported a disturbing trend in natural gas data. After correcting for weather, supplies were running behind demand and trending even lower. Had this trend continued, gas storage levels would have been seriously depleted this year, leading to the possibility of shortages next winter. The good news for consumers is that this trend has not continued. Averaged over the last eight weeks, supplies are now holding their own relative to demand, after correcting for weather, and trending upward. The relative strength may be due to additional supplies?additional LNG is now being imported, for example. Or it may be due to further ?demand destruction? caused by current prices. We will not know until the Energy Information Administration gets around to releasing the data several months from now, so stay tuned for future developments.

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Ferguson’s Forecast: Oil, Gas Prices Drop 5 Percent

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