Gas Petrospective – August 5, 2010
Natural gas prices jumped back up yesterday, adding almost a dime, as traders covered shorts ahead of hotter temperatures. Dow Jones wrote in its daily roundup yesterday of “forecasts of blistering temperatures in the major consuming regions.” This follows a comment last week about “scorching” readings on the two-week horizon. At this point, it seems that we will experience above-normal readings across most of the nation east of the Rocky Mountains through August 19th. Deviations are expected to be as many as 6-7 degrees above normal.
Although tropical developments were still relatively tame, Colorado State stood by its expectation that we will name 18 storms before the end of November, with 10 of those being hurricanes. The university also said that the chances of a major (Category Three or higher) hurricane hitting the US was 75% this year. Tropical Atlantic waters remain near record high temperatures, which is a favorable environment in which to spawn tropical storms.
Americans used 91,704 gigawatt-hours of electricity in the final week of July, which was an increase of 7.4% against the same week in 2009. Despite that, last week’s usage was 2.3% below the previous week’s consumption. Year-to-date, US electrical demand is up 4.2%, according to the Edison Electric Institute, in its weekly statistical report out yesterday afternoon.
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