Oil & gas stage major surge

Crude oil and natural gas are off to a flying start this week with market conditions perfectly aligning to create strong price action.

Oil trading

It’s been an exceptionally good couple of days for oil prices.

The key WTI and Brent Crude benchmarks are heading in one direction as they carry on the momentum built up over the weekend.

As of Tuesday, WTI had passed $76.33, making 1.1% on the day, and continues on its upward trajectory.

Much can be said of Brent. The North Sea benchmark is aiming to break the $80 level. At the time of writing, Brent futures were trading for around $79.47 after making 1.15%.

Why the rally and why now? It’s a combination of tighter global supplies, trader confidence, and strong American Petroleum Institute (API) numbers. The three together have created a perfect price storm, hence the strong price action we’re currently seeing.

Firstly, it looks like energy markets are the place to be right now for traders. They appear to be pushing these new highs and are confident in the market’s overall strength.

The API’s inventories report from last week helped underpin this market confidence too. The US has long been a bellwether for oil demand – it is the world’s largest consumer after all – which makes numbers from the API or EIA particularly useful.

The API reported a 6.108m barrel drawdown for the week ending September 17th. Market estimates forecasted a decline of 2.4m.

As the US economy opens up, energy-intensive industries are starting to roar back to life, hence the higher-than-expected drawdown. It’s much the same story in developed economies worldwide as they look to return to post-pandemic normality.

As winter heating season approaches, and supplies tighten, we’re possibly going to see oil prices remain strong as temperatures drop.

Goldman Sachs is feeling particularly confident, having revised its year-end price targets up to $87 for WTI and $90 for Brent.

Goldman said: “While we have long held a bullish oil view, the current global oil supply-demand deficit is larger than we expected, with the recovery in global demand from the Delta impact even faster than our above-consensus forecast and with global supply remaining short of our below consensus forecasts.

“The current oil supply-demand deficit is larger than we expected, with the recovery in global demand from the Delta impact even faster than our above-consensus forecast and with global supply remaining short of our below consensus forecasts.”

Price action is still very much a tightrope act. With the news that US Shale is ready to start drilling, and could add up to 800,000 bpd to supplies, the supply/demand balance could be upset.

Natural gas trading

If you thought crude oil was in a strong position, wait until you see natural gas.

Natural gas prices rose sharply on Monday to reach close to yearly highs at $5.30 before soaring to an unprecedented $6.13 on Tuesday morning.

A squeeze on supply caused by Hurricane Ida is offering support in the US. A large chunk of Gulf of Mexico and Southern US infrastructure is still closed for repairs or maintenance, lowering supply levels, after being hit by Ida earlier in September.

Let’s be clear: this is a global phenomenon. Simply put, there isn’t enough natural gas currently to satiate demand.

Prices of utility gas are skyrocketing in the US, EU, and UK as well as in Asia where demand is intensifying.

Switching back to the US, we should be in the midst of a sustained inventory build-up. It’s injection season – the period where more gas is squirrelled away in anticipation of high winter demand. However, it appears that

The latest Energy Information Administration (EIA) data showed a build-up of 76 billion cubic feet (Bcf) for the week ended September 17^th. This was higher than the expected 70 BCf – but stocks remain some 598 Bcf lower than this time last year.

Looking at short-term weather-driven demand, Natural Gas Weather reports: “National demand will remain light this week as highs of 60s to 80s rules most of the U.S. and with very little coverage of highs into the 90s. Overall, national demand will be low to very low into the foreseeable future.”