Natural Gas prices continue to flip flop – update for November 19th

The Natural Gas prices continue to move in a scissors like mode, with one day it falls and the other it rises. Yesterday, November 18th, the Nymex Henry Hub Future settled on 3.93$ MMBTU, which represents a 2.48% drop.

On the other hand, today, November 19th the Natural Gas prices showed some strength as the Nymex Henry Hub Future started the trade with a rise of 4.3% increase and is currently traded at 4.1$ MMBTU (one million BTU) as of 15.22PM GMT.

This unclear scatter in this commodity’s price is probably due to speculation in this commodity as an investment and not on due to this uses as an energy commodity and  the level of it’s consumption. Further,  the current status in the US is that the level of stocks in this commodity is at an all time high (as reported by the EIA).

All awhile, the crude oil prices continue to show weakness as it is currently traded at a lower rate then it did yesterday, as the Nymex Crude Future is traded at 80.87 USD/ Barrel, a 1.2% decrease or a 0.98 USD/ barrel fall.

Following the report made by the EIA regarding the declining Finished Motor Gasoline stock which I have referred to in my previous post, this decline in stock was caused by the reduced production of refineries during the month of October, in which refineries in Northeast of America shut down, due to maintenance repairs, and refineries in France were closed due to the strikers held throughout  the country. According to Bloomberg, this decline in refineries’ production tightened the supplies, causing a boost in major refineries’ profit.