See-saw price action continued in the natural gas futures market as of midday trading Wednesday, with prices rebounding on a hotter outlook for key markets heading into the back half of June.
Here’s the latest:
- July Nymex futures up 14.1 cents to $2.727/MMBtu as of 2:04 p.m. ET
- Latest rally continues up-and-down week; front month sold off 17.0 cents in Tuesday’s session
- Forecast trending warmer for 11- to 15-day period, per Maxar’s Weather Desk
A pattern change during the June 15-19 time frame featuring more heat over the eastern half of the Lower 48 “is now projected to occur more quickly and strongly, leading today’s forecast to be hotter from the Midwest to the East,” Maxar said Wednesday. The eastern two-thirds of the country would be expected to see above-normal temperatures, including “peaks in the upper 80s in Chicago and low 90s in Washington, DC.”
- NGI modeling 97 Bcf injection into Lower 48 storage for week ending May 31
The five-year average injection for the period is 103 Bcf, while 105 Bcf was injected in the year-ago period, U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) data show.
The Lower 48 surplus versus the five-year average stood at 586 Bcf as of the week ending May 24. The year-on-five-year surplus has trended lower for each of the past five weekly reports.
- Henry Hub spot prices plunging as flows to Sabine Pass LNG decline
- Benchmark averaging $2.215, down 35.5 cents, per NGI’s MidDay Price Alert
Recent pipeline events have disrupted natural gas flows in Louisiana and appeared to play a role in sending Henry Hub prices soaring earlier this week.
Having resolved a force majeure at its Eunice Southbound location ahead of schedule, ANR Pipeline as of Wednesday was working through a separate force majeure event limiting flows farther north in Louisiana at its Evangeline Southbound throughput meter. ANR notified shippers Tuesday that flows through Evangeline Southbound would be restricted until mid-June.
Meanwhile, deliveries to the Sabine Pass liquefied natural gas terminal trended lower day/day in the latest data from NGI’s North America LNG Export Flow Tracker. Deliveries to the Cheniere Energy Inc. terminal totaled 3.8 million Dth/d for Wednesday, down from volumes around 4 million Dth/d on Monday and Tuesday. Late last week, deliveries to Sabine Pass topped 4.5 million Dth/d.
Monthly LNG exports out of Sabine Pass dipped sharply in June 2023, EIA data show. Cheniere CEO Jack Fusco during a 1Q2024 earnings call sought to reassure the market that the company does “not anticipate a long outage like we executed in June last year.”
