Natural Gas Price– Weekly Recap 23-27 January

Natural gas prices (Henry Hub spot) changed direction and sharply rose during last week. That being said, during January natural gas spot price fell by 12.75% and the future price (February delivery) declined by 7.69%. I further talk about the recent recovery of natural gas prices in here.      

Here is a short recap for the changes of natural gas price for the week ending on January 27th, the penultimate week of January:

Natural Gas Price January – Weekly Recap and Analysis

table natural gas price -23-27 January 2012Natural gas price, the Nymex Henry Hub Future Price (short term delivery) sharply rose during last week by 17.95% and reached on Friday $2.76 /mmbtu – the highest level since January 11th; its average daily change was 3.47%, and its weekly average price was 7.16% above the previous week’s average price.

Natural gas price (Henry Hub spot) also sharply increased by 15.56% during the week, and its average price was 5.29% above last week’s average price.

The gap between the natural gas future and spot prices, i.e. future price minus spot price (if the spot are higher than the future its called Backwardation, if future is higher than its called Contango) shifted between  Contango  and Backwardation during the week, by the end of the week the gap rose to $0.16/mmbtu, i.e. Contango.

Natural Gas Price Charts

The following charts demonstrate the changes of natural gas (Henry Hub) and futures prices (Nymex Henry Hub) in $/mmbtu between January 23rd and January 27th.

Natural Gas price  chart - 23-27  January  2012In the first chart are the changes of natural gas prices (Henry Hub future and spot) during last week: the natural gas price (spot and future short term delivery) changed direction and sharply rose.

Natural Gas price chart - percent change 23-27 January  2012

In the second chart are the daily percent changes of natural gas prices (Henry Hub spot and Nymex Henry Hub future).

Natural Gas Storage Update – EIA Report:

According to the recent natural gas report, the natural gas storage sharply declined last week by 5.84% to 3,098 billion cubic feet; natural gas storage is 21.4% above the 5-year average, and is 20.7% above the storage compared with 2011.

For the complete natural gas storage report, see here.

For further reading: