Quote from Uncle_Ho:
What are your expectations on nat gas for the rest of the year? I'm thinking of staying long and i don't like rolling positions in the futures because of the premium, so what i'm doing is buying UNG calls from april '09 out to jan '10. I figure this ETF represents the spot month nat gas.
Any advice from here?
Quote from sledged:
I was having this discussion with a friend of mine who is also in the electricity industry. Nat Gas is so cheap right now that running an efficient Combined Cycle Gas Power Plant is as cheap as a coal one. And being that this is the time of year where all the large Nuclear and Coal burning power plants take advantage of the more mild temperatures and come offline for maintenance outages, gas plants are running to support the grid.
In order to keep the lights on many many gas fired power plants are running at all times of the day. Not only are the more efficient gas power plants running all day and all night but the less efficient units that dont commonly run are being called on to help keep the lights on. That is where I came to wonder, how is it with the absolutely staggering amount of gas that must be getting burned on a daily basis has this commodity continued to slide further and further towards $3 mmbtu? It just seems so odd to me, can anyone shed light on this topic for me?
Quote from sledged:
I was having this discussion with a friend of mine who is also in the electricity industry. Nat Gas is so cheap right now that running an efficient Combined Cycle Gas Power Plant is as cheap as a coal one. And being that this is the time of year where all the large Nuclear and Coal burning power plants take advantage of the more mild temperatures and come offline for maintenance outages, gas plants are running to support the grid.
In order to keep the lights on many many gas fired power plants are running at all times of the day. Not only are the more efficient gas power plants running all day and all night but the less efficient units that dont commonly run are being called on to help keep the lights on. That is where I came to wonder, how is it with the absolutely staggering amount of gas that must be getting burned on a daily basis has this commodity continued to slide further and further towards $3 mmbtu? It just seems so odd to me, can anyone shed light on this topic for me?
Quote from CET:
You obviously don't know how much industrial gas consumption has tanked since the economy came to a crawl. Also, we are in the shoulder months for gas usage with heating load very small and none being used for a/c. And as the other poster stated the new finds of shale gas greatly increased production although some wells have been shut in because of price. Price tells you all you need to know.