Natural Gas Weekly Fundamental Analysis September 3-7, 2012, Forecast

Introduction: Natural gas is nevertheless a major commodity in its own right, which is used for everything from cooking food to heating houses during the winter. Natural Gas is growing much faster than either of its non-renewable fossil fuel competitors, oil and coal.

Do not miss the weekly U.S. gas inventories report. The figures are issued by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) every Thursday afternoon at 15:30 (released Friday at 15:30 if there was a U.S. bank holiday on Monday). Here’s a link to the latest EIA report. The main natural gas moving figure in there is the change in inventories from the previous week. When it comes to the gas inventories report, we’re talking about billions of cubic feet, Bcf for short.

When the actual change in inventories number is released, it is the deviation from the expected number that is really important. If the actual inventories figure shows a 24 Bcf rise when an 84 Bcf increase was expected, then that is actually positive for the price of natural gas. All else equal, the price of natural gas should rise after the release.

A barrel of oil has roughly 6 times the energy content of natural gas. If the fuels were perfect substitutes, oil prices would tend to be about 6 times natural gas prices. However, due to various market characteristics discussed briefly above and the ease of using oil, the price of oil has been following a pattern of 8-12 times that of natural gas. However that ratio has spiked dramatically since March 2009.

Weekly Analysis and Recommendation:

Natural Gas  was driven this week by Hurricane Isaac until it make landfall mid week and the threat dissipated. Although global sentiment saw commodities raise on Friday after Mr. Bernanke’s speech. As the USD fell to recent lows, dollar denominated commodities soared.

This week’s injection report from the EIA showed higher than expected increases but as you can see from the chart above, the report had little effect on prices, as NG climbed steadily this week.

Natural Gas is expected to decline after the elation from Mr. Bernanke’s address wears off.

As per US energy department, gas storage has been increased by 66BCF, higher than prior week and survey also. Though consumption has been increased in the last week after two weeks of fall, the demand level is still low in comparison to last year at this same time. Active hurricane season has created supply disturbances and weekly supply declined by 2.84% in the last week. As per National Hurricane Centre, tropical storm Isaac has turned as depression inland, which eased the concern of supply disturbances. As per U.S. Treasury Department, International Energy Agency, a 28-member group of oil consuming countries are prepared to call upon a meet to take appropriate action to ensure that the market is fully and timely supplied

FxEmpire provides in-depth analysis for each currency and commodity we review. Fundamental analysis is provided in three components. We provide a detailed monthly analysis and forecast at the beginning of each month. Then we provide more recent analysis and information in our weekly reports and we provide daily updates and outlooks.

Tier 1 and 2 Economic Releases for August 27-31, 2012

Historical: From 2010 to Present

Highest: 6.106 on Jan 07, 2010

Average: 3.836 over this period

Lowest: 1.903 on April 19, 2012

WEEKLY

• Natural Gas Weekly Update
  Release Schedule: Thursday between 2:00 and 2:30 p.m. (Eastern Time)
• Weekly Natural Gas Storage Report
  Release Schedule: Thursday at 10:30 (Eastern Time) (schedule) 

Economic Highlights for the upcoming week… Tiers 3 keep your eyes on these

Upcoming Government Bond Auctions

Date Time Country 

Government Bond Auction

Date  Time  Country 

Sep 03  09:10  Norway  Bond auction

Sep 03  10:00  Belgium  OLO auction

Sep 04  00:30  Japan  Auctions 10Y JGBs

Sep 04  09:15  Austria  Bond auction

Sep 04  09:30  Belgium  Auctions Dec 2012 (3M) & Feb 2013 (6M) T-bills

Sep 04  14:30  UK  Details 0.75% 2034 I/L Gilt & 1.75% Sep 2022 Gilt on Sep

Sep 05  09:10  Sweden  Nominal bond auction

Sep 05  09:30  Germany  Eur 5.0bn Sep 2022 Bund auction

Sep 05  09:30  UK  4.5% 2042 Gilt auction

Sep 06  00:30  Japan  Auctions 30Y JGBs

Sep 06  08:30  Spain  Bono auction

Sep 06  08:50  France  OAT auction

Sep 06  09:10  Sweden  I/L bond auction

Sep 06  15:00  US  Announces 3Y Notes on Sep 11, 10Y Notes on Sep 12 &

Sep 07  15:30  Italy