Spot natural gas prices (CFDS ON NATURAL GAS) stabilized lower in their recent trading at the intraday levels, recording slight daily losses until the moment of writing this report, by -0.14%. It settled at the price of $8.634 per million British thermal units, after rising slightly during yesterday’s trading by 0.26%. Over the past week, the price advanced by 7.37%.
Spot natural gas prices strengthened in the last full week of May, as energy demand remained strong even as demand in the south-central US declined along with temperatures. With a brief heat wave fueling demand on the East Coast, another blast of cold hits the West Coast - NGI's Weekly Spot Gas National Avg. 42.0 cents jumped to $8,340.
The National Weather Service said several fronts are expected to affect the Pacific Northwest, the Rockies, and the Northern Plains in the next few days. Thunderstorms and heavy rains accompanied by snowfall are likely in some areas.
With the spring maintenance season winding down in the coming weeks, all eyes will likely be on production growth, after reaching levels close to 97 billion cubic feet per day this winter, production in the low to medium range of 90 billion cubic feet per day since then. Some of that was due to the late-season cold that led to the freezes, while planned pipelines and field maintenance are also cutting off flows. However, production on Friday was reported to be near 97 billion cubic feet again.
Earlier, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said Thursday that inventories as of May 20 were at just 1,812 billion cubic feet, which is 387 billion cubic feet below last year's levels and 327 billion cubic feet below the five-year average.
Technically, the decline of natural gas comes as a result of the stability of the pivotal resistance level 8.870, to reap the profits of its recent rises. It also tried to gain positive momentum that might help it breach that resistance, as it tries to drain some of its clear overbought by the relative strength indicators, especially with the start of negative signals from them.
This comes in complete control of the main bullish trend over the medium and short term, along a slope line, with the continuation of positive support for its trades above its simple moving average for the previous 50 days.
Therefore, our expectations remain neutral, awaiting the behavior of natural gas towards the resistance level 8.870, in the event that the price was able to breach that resistance, this is a confirmation of its intention to continue rising, to target immediately after that the first resistance levels at 9.550.
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