Thursday, July 11, 2013

Ahead of Today's EIA Natural Gas Storage Report the Question Is...

... Will next week's warm up be tradable?
From the CME:

Weekly Natural Gas Storage Survey 7/11/13 
Each week, we poll 40 professional storage forecasts for our weekly Natural-Gas Storage Box Scores (as seen in each bi-weekly issue of Energy Metro Desk*). This is North America's biggest and most comprehensive natural-gas storage survey and report.
Editors forecast this week:+78 Bcf
Average: +80.3 Bcf
Median: +81 Bcf
Range: +72 to 87 Bcf
 
Natural Gas Storage Tealeaves for 7/11/13
The numbers don't lie. Well, they don't lie often, anyway. Our tealeaves this week point to a surprise. Surprise. We note that often when our Friday, Early View report comes in around 5 Bcf lower (or higher) than the Metro Desk Consensus on the following Wednesday, and the Early View range is over 25 Bcf between the lows and highs, the chances of something odd coming out of the EIA are pretty good. Add to this confusion the fact we did have a 3 Bcf spread between the three categories we track (3.1) and it's fairly safe to say a surprise is in the offing of (we think) 5 Bcf lower than consensus. Yes folks, our tealeaves point to a build a bit lower than our 80.3 Bcf EMD Consensus and quite a bit lower than the other surveys' 82-83 Bcf forecasts. We note that Genscape is on a tear lately, nailing the last two weeks, spot-on. This week, Genscape is at 72 Bcf. Just saying. Bentek, the Big B is forecasting an 83 Bcf build for its Flow Model and only 76 Bcf on its S/D Model. In the past five weeks we've had two surprises, so, we're due. Most post-4th of July Holiday reports are a bit dodgy anyway, and this year should prove to be no exception. Last year's report, same week, EIA reported a 39 Bcf build and the market came around the 45 Bcf neighborhood. So, last year the risk was to the low side as well, according to last year's tealeaves. We see a repeat this year. -the editor

Weather Tealeaves
Forecast Courtesy of the Commodity Weather Group (www.commoditywx.com)
Thought of the day: Slightly Hotter Central US Next Week.
The main adjustments on this morning's outlook are to be slightly stronger on temperatures from interior Texas to the Midwest. While the models show some stronger ridging popping through this area and even into the East, there are continued concerns that precipitation risks continue to hamper the situation as they have been doing. We stay cautious on high temperatures.
Increased monsoonal flow into the Southwest is cooling temperatures even further for next week and could limit the 11-15 heat even more than our current outlook. In the Tropics, Chantal has weakened dramatically overnight and may not really even be a storm anymore. The GFS has backed away from the next storm threat too, showing a weak development of a Dorian storm, but then loses the system before any impacts....MORE