On July 19, Jenny Fordham, Vice President of Markets, for the Natural Gas Supply Association (NGSA), hosted a webinar on the summer outlook for natural gas.
NGSA represents 14 integrated and independent natural gas producers and suppliers and is the only Washington, D.C., natural gas association with a focus on the upstream segment of the natural gas industry. NGSA’s mission is to promote the benefits of competitive natural gas markets, which result in reliable, efficient transportation and delivery of natural gas.
Jenny took webinar participants through seven factors that will influence natural gas supply and demand: weather, the economy, demand, storage, production, supply, and wild cards. She explained the below.
Weather: NGSA is projecting a summer forecast that is three percent cooler than last summer, but eight percent warmer than the 30-year average.
Economy: NGSA is projecting sluggish GDP growth of 1.4 percent
Demand: NGSA is projecting natural gas demand to increase six percent over last summer up to 69.2 Bcf/day, largely from an increase in natural gas for power generation. NGSA also projects an increase of 4.1 Bcf/day of new industrial demand between 2015-2020 from petrochemical, fertilizer, and steel plant openings and expansions.
Storage: NGSA projects that storage will end at 3,875 Bcf by the end of season putting large downward pressure on natural gas prices.
Production: Summer production is effectively flat with NGSA projecting 74.7 Bcf/day up from 74.6 Bcf/day.
Wild cards: The summer hurricane season has a mixed outlook, which could impact supply. However, the stable natural gas market appears likely to be able to mitigate any such impacts.
Overall, NGSA is projecting a stable summer outlook from the consumer’s perspective.
Jenny’s presentation is available on the APGA website at
www.apga.org/events/webinars. For questions on this article, please contact Scott Morrison of APGA staff by phone at 202-464-2742 or by email at
smorrison@apga.org.