Crunch Time     Time for Natural Gas         Current Oil Outlook             It IS the dollar! First the April numbers. The EIS portfolio was up 11% for the month, about the same amount as the oil and services indexes, a bit better than the S&P. Year to date being up 8% is good relative performance. About 3% of it was due to the options on futures strategy. I added an option on some late 2011 natural gas futures contracts. I also disposed of most …

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Since natural gas is more of a regional market than oil, which is more global, we Norte Americanos tend to estimate future gas prices with reference to factors such as likely Canadian supply and local inventory levels.  But imports of LNG are increasingly important to our continent’s gas price.  To obtain LNG deliveries, our terminals bid against those in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere.  Recently our gas prices have been lower than some abroad thus diverting some LNG shipments away from the the U.S.   In Europe and Asia these days …

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One of the things I love about the Financial Times (the “pink” paper) is that their articles are short and to the point and they do not bleed from one page to another.  Anyway, the following piece from today’s paper puts further flesh on the bones of my recent LNG post to the point that U.S. natural gas prices are under pressure from the higher prices extant in other countries because U.S. ports are being outbid for LNG shipments.  This piece highlights Asian demand factors.  It also describes changing …

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An in-depth report on the market for natural gas in today’s Wall Street Journal focuses on the competition between the U.S. and Europe for LNG.  The price of gas over there is around $20 per mmcf, nearly double that here.  So there is good reason to suspect that over time the two prices will come closer as either supplies loosen up there or prices rise here in order to attract more LNG.  Most of the fundamentals that I have notice recently suggest prices will more likely remain high in …

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