Week Ahead: Gas demand weaker
* Oil Formed a descending Triangle. Giving more bearish confirmation of target of $60
* FED giving signs of another 75-point basis hike. Recession fears are bearish for oil
* Demand slows down worries due to China’s zero COVID policy and OPEC+ cutting production
* Energy Price Cap
oil gapped up from opening on September 4th. Extended 3% by September 5th. Then losing almost 10% of gains. Reaching the price of $90 on September 5th, and dropping to $81 on September 8th. Then ended the week with a 5% gain. Closing weekly at the lowest since January 17th starting week.
Crude oil inventories rose last week by 8.844 million. Indicating demand is weakening. It was expected inventories were to fall by just 250,000 barrels.
I am anticipating oil to gap down during opening today. I am waiting to see how it will react to this trend line if it is going to continue down. Broke out of the descending triangle. Looks like it came back up for the last touch
On Sunday, September 4, 2022, Russia announced the closure of its main gas supply pipeline to Europe. This spiked fears into the energy market. Both Natural gas and crude oil both gapped 1% before the closing of September 4th. Monday, September 5th the OPEC+ held a meeting. Production was cut by 100,000 barrels a day for the month of October. OPEC+ is already below meeting production. Supply fears pushed Oil up 5%. After oil digested the news it fell from $90 to about $81.14.
Concerns of sluggish global demand outweighed the warning of President Vladimir Putin about the potential withdrawal of oil form of Russian Energy. Also new COVID lockdowns in China. Chinese imports fell 9.8% in August. The OPEC+ cut was larger for Asia and Europe indicating weaker anticipated demand.
Russian President Vladimir Putin to halt all oil and gas supplies if price caps are imposed on Russian energy resources. Hours later EU proposed to cap Russian gas.
The OPEC+ cut was done due to the possibility of a nuclear deal between the U.S. and Iran. This deal is expected to release over 1 million BPD of supply into the market
Gasprices
oil weekly outlook Continuous downtrend on oil. Currently around the area of 97.75. Waiting for retrace to trend line before continuing down. Crude has tested this current minor structure demand area three times since july 5th. Formed a double bottom on the Weekly timeframe. Waiting for a break and close below current support around $97.00.
With continued recession fears, and demand stopping has been causing oil to fall for the past few weeks. If current support and demand structure broken it will be a confirmation of continued selloff and possible to $60 price range.Waiting to see how it reacts to retracement to the trend line. If it respects the trend line confirmation of continued sell, if it breaks the trend line then wait for pull back confirmation for buy.
China having rising COVID cases and possibly going backdown on lockdown cause cause a continued selloff for oil, making demand a worry for oil. China is one of the nation's top oil importer. China was already on lockdowns earlier this year. On Friday, July 15th President Biden took a trip to discuss oil production in hopes to get gas prices down. He visited Saudi and the market reacted friday to the meeting, expecting very little progress for oil production. Oil rose. On Sunday July 17th a Senior U.S. state department advisor stated middle east nations would being taking extra steps to increase oil production. With the increase from some middle east nations, OPEC + 650,000 increase set for July and August already would be enough to keep oil prices down.
Global Politics effect on energy Gas is the winning card of Russia Ukraine's global conflict in investor view.
We have seen a lot of back and force between Russia and the USA because of a pure political-military opportunity from the USA side,
What makes Ukrania is the main interface of the USA in Europe, From Russia side, they will not choose the war as the best option rather than using economic sanctions,
The second top Gas producer in the world will play with its best weapons,
Yes, Gas
The best energy commodity which the whole of Europe depends on. The prices of gas will increase in the coming weeks.
This political issue will give the energy sector some bull push so, we will see some volume inter the market these days.
We have seen the gas prices increase in the last May 2021 from 2.550 to make more than 120% in just 4 months, then we have seen the price start retrograde from 6.240 to 3.800 with making the second wave for bulls to reinter the market before the Russia Ukraine conflict.
You may see the situation is unclear for now, But make sure that if Russia got delisted from swift code that will be huge negative effects on the whole of Europe before the USA itself so, don't worry the invasion will be the last choice in this conflict between The US and Russia putting Ukrain in the front line of the US interests.
For the Investors who like to bet on wars, this is for you.
Going with direction is preferred for investment so we will take the chance as we got a tip for Gas prices.
Whether there is a war or not the gas price will continue increasing just because of the speech from each side.
Position
============
Buy entry in the 5.00-5.30 area
Buy limit at 3.00 - 3.30 area
Targeting
9.00 - 9.300 area
We expect a 78% return in 6 months to 12 months (Estimated)
Geopolitical tensions lend a tailwind to natural gas prices- Aneeka Gupta, Director, Macroeconomic Research, WisdomTree
Natural gas prices have declined sharply by 32.8%1 over the prior month. As we discussed here, market price action had run ahead of its underlying fundamentals. A combination of expectations of a warmer than usual winter period in North America2 coupled with the implied reduction in natural gas demand resulted in the recent sell-off in US natural gas prices. There has been little evidence of net physical tightening as storage levels have risen seasonally in a normal fashion, as illustrated below. Net speculative positioning in natural gas futures is below the 5-year average and approaching the 1-standard deviation mark underscoring weak sentiment.
Geopolitical tensions escalate over the Russia/Ukraine border
Another angle on the natural gas market is the rise of geopolitical tensions, which could tell a more compelling story. Storage levels in the European gas markets are below the seasonal trend at a time when tensions are rising over the build-up of Russian military on the Russian/Ukrainian border. The US is expected to urge Germany to agree to stop the contested Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline if Russian President Vladimir Putin invades Ukraine. President Biden’s intentions were made clear at an important video call between the US and Russia on 7 December 2021. Nord Stream 2 is important both for President Putin, as a route to sell more gas into Europe, and for Germany, which relies on supplies from Russia. This has led to further uncertainty on Russian pipeline supply pertaining to the approval process for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. At the start of December, European gas in storage was at 67.5% of capacity, compared with a 5-year average of 84% for this time of year, according to Oxford Economics. Additional Russian natural gas supply via the Nord Stream 2 pipeline was expected to gain approval by early January, but the German regulator BNetzA suspended the certification procedure in mid-November. The intentions on the Russian side also remain unclear. The latest Gazprom supply auction suggests that the October and November flows are likely to be mirrored in the December flows, which will do little to counteract the extremely low inventory levels. Added to that, natural gas shipments from Norway are expected to slump by nearly 13% after the Troll field suffered an unplanned outage, according to the Network operator Gassco AS. There are further signs that other sources of sustainable energy from nuclear power are unlikely to be made available in the coming months due to maintenance work being carried out in France’s nuclear power stations.
Natural gas futures curve heads back to seasonal norms
In November 2021, the front end of the futures curve was very elevated (see 09/11/2021 line in Figure 2). Excluding the very front-month seasonal contango3, the curve was extremely negatively sloped for the following 4 months (backwardation), indicating market tightness at the time. Today (see 09/12/2021 line in Figure 2), the front end of the curve has dropped and is more in line with what is seasonally normal (see previous year curves around this time of year). This indicates abnormal tightness has largely dissipated for the US.
The outperformance of front-month tracking broad commodity strategies relative to optimised strategies (that tend to invest further out on the curve observed last month has now largely evaporated with the drop in the front end of the natural gas futures.
As an example, let’s look at the Optimised Roll Commodity Index (EBCIWTT), which invests using the same weights as the Bloomberg Commodity Index (BCOMTR) at yearly rebalance in January but, typically, invests further on the curve on contangoed commodities. Over virtually the whole year, it was invested in the April 2022 contract, which led it to underperform as the front end of the curve rose by a much larger extent.
This quickly reverted when the gap between the front contracts and the April 2022 contract started to close (see Figure 2), helping the optimised index catch up with BCOM performance and eventually start outperforming from the beginning of December 2021.
This is particularly striking when decomposing the return difference between these two indices. In Figure 4, we decompose it by sector, splitting Energy between Natural Gas and the Oil Complex. See how Natural Gas represented much of the underperformance when the front end of the curve was extremely steep. That negative contribution quickly shrank from November this year, eventually turning positive in December.
Conclusion
US natural gas prices have fallen with supply and inventory conditions returning to normal in the country. However, tightness in Europe could once again translate to higher demand for US exports. Amidst the depth of the European winter, as heating demand grows, low stockpiles in Europe would mean elevated demand to replenish them when the summer season arrives. This is likely to translate into higher demand for US natural gas at a time of higher uncertainty of supply from neighbouring countries such as Russia and Norway. However, in the absence of renewed tightness in US natural gas stemming from the higher European demand, US natural gas futures curves could maintain their current structure. That could leave prime conditions for optimised commodity strategies to outperform front-month tracking strategies.
Sources
1 Bloomberg – Henry Hub US Natural gas prices as of 7 December 2021
2 NOAA – National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
3 See “Commodity ETPs are exposed to futures contracts not the physical spot. Why does it matter?” for a description of contango, backwardation and why these are important concepts in commodity market futures investing.
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$SR: $80 Short Target for Sell-offFirst off, please don't take anything I say seriously or as financial advice. That being said, this is on opinion basis (as always). Spire Inc. recently went down for a variety of reasons. One of those reasons I think is a result of resistance given lower demand for gas consumption in the coronavirus time period. That is why I am not bullish for the expected earnings call and think it may have an outlook for bearish potential. A quick turnover would be a buy and then sell at an $80 short target in order to mitigate risk. There are higher growth stocks to invest in.
OIL how low can you go?Historically oil has been in a down trend for almost 20yrs, along with the trend current global conditions are removing demand from the equation with average expected decreases of 2 million barrels a day! To make matters worse supply has not decreased at all! Multiple oil producing nations are continuing production regardless of decreased demand and prices, causing a HUGE glut in supply that is demanding storage of the oil in some unconventional ways.
I believe there will be more downside to the oil price in the near future, but with the continued money printing by all central banks oil just may break the downward wedge it has created and see ever higher nominal prices along with every other commodity when the money hits the fan.
God Speed!