Production Is Still Winning the Argument<\/p>\n
Lower-48 dry gas production held near record highs around 110 Bcf per day last week.\u00a0I\u2019ve been watching this number every week waiting for a meaningful pullback and it is not coming.\u00a0Rig counts are still elevated compared to a year ago.\u00a0Output keeps replenishing storage faster than demand can draw it down. As long as production stays at these levels every bullish catalyst has to fight through a massive supply cushion before prices can sustain any upside momentum.\u00a0That is not a setup that rewards aggressive buying.<\/p>\n
LNG Exports Let the Bulls Down<\/p>\n
Feedgas flows dipped toward 17.7 Bcf per day last week because of seasonal maintenance at Gulf Coast export terminals.\u00a0That gas stayed in the domestic market instead of leaving the country and traders noticed immediately.\u00a0LNG export demand has been one of the strongest fundamental supports for U.S. natural gas over the past few years.\u00a0When those flows slow, even temporarily, the oversupply risk comes back into focus fast.\u00a0The maintenance window is not permanent but the timing was bad for a market that needed every bullish support it could find.<\/p>\n
The Global Picture Has Not Gone Away<\/p>\n
Qatar\u2019s Ras Laffan facility is still running at reduced capacity.\u00a0Seventeen percent of its export operations are offline and repairs are going to take years not months.\u00a0European and Asian buyers who depended on that supply have to find it somewhere else every single month until the work is done. U.S. export terminals sit directly in that path. The weekly feedgas numbers are not reflecting it cleanly yet but that structural demand pull is building underneath this market whether the domestic storage report acknowledges it or not.<\/p>\n
The Strait of Hormuz situation adds another layer.\u00a0Any sustained disruption to Middle East energy flows forces global buyers to look for replacement supply and U.S. LNG becomes more strategically valuable every week the Strait stays restricted.\u00a0I\u2019ve watched big structural stories get buried under loud short term numbers before.\u00a0Right now the weekly storage report is the loud number.\u00a0When it stops dominating the conversation, the global LNG picture gets a lot more attention.<\/p>\n
Weather Helped but Not Enough<\/p>\n
Cooler temperatures across parts of the Midwest and East added some late season heating demand early in the week and triggered short covering.\u00a0That is what late season cold does in this market.\u00a0It creates just enough excitement to pull in a bid even when the fundamentals do not support it.\u00a0By midweek it was over. This is the dead zone between heating and cooling demand and the market knows it. Spring doesn\u2019t give natural gas a reason to run. Last week was a reminder of that.<\/p>\n
Weekly Outlook<\/p>\n
The $2.749 pivot is the level that sets the tone this week. Hold above it and buyers are still in control with a potential breakout over $2.905 putting $3.107 back on the radar. Lose it and $2.592 becomes the next test with the multi-month lows at $2.564 and $2.442 behind it.<\/p>\n
Given how long this market has been grinding lower in both price and time, watch for a closing price reversal bottom on any test of that support area.\u00a0That is a pattern that shows up in weather markets and this is a weather market waiting to happen.\u00a0One heat forecast that sticks changes this whole setup fast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Production Is Still Winning the Argument Lower-48 dry gas production held near record highs around 110 Bcf per…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":435580,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2791,2794,42,144904,28757,43,2797,40,38,41,39,14944],"class_list":["post-435579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-commodities","tag-fundamental","tag-headlines","tag-james_gas_forecast","tag-natural-gas","tag-news","tag-technical","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-weekly"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}