Gigem77

Opportunities for Both Shorts and Longs in Natural Gas

Ari is wrong on several points. Natgas is not fungible like oil. US export capacity is quite small and other sources exist closer to Asia. So demand in India has no impact on US natgas prices or supplies.

US consumption is still running about 4bcf per day less than during the same period last year. Industrial demand is responsible for this drop. The mounting job losses tell us that demand is not returning. The inventory replacement bounce in GDP is temporary.

The UNG is issuing more shares. They began on September 28th.

Pressure in the pipelines and storage facilities is so high that operational flow orders have been and are being issued to stop the producers from compressing more gas into the system. The rig count is increasing from the summer lows. There are hundreds of wells that have been drilled but await completion. So the supply overhang is not just from storage, but also from curtailed production. This means that winter draws will be smaller. We will exit winter with more gas in storage than last year and begin this cycle again. When will industrial demand rebound?

Residential and Commercial heating demand during the winter are not enough to compensate for the loss of industrial demand. We need petrochemical plants, car factories and refineries to reopen or increase capacity utilization and that is not happening yet.

Nothing the politicians have done so far is helping natgas. If they would convert the government's fleets of vehicles to use CNG, that would help. Heating oil prices are low and inventories are above the high end of the average range. All of this is good news for consumers this winter.

So the best hope for the natgas bulls is that speculators will run the price higher and that there will be sharp short covering rallies like the ones seen this year. That is a trading environment for the nimble. It is not time yet, imo, for longer term investors to put money to work here.

Shares of producers like UPL, XTO and CHK are tracking the broad market, not the natgas price. So they are quite overbought and will fall with the SPX when it corrects. Their 7-9 dollar hedges are dropping off the books. So earnings will show some real hits over the next few quarters.