Volatility
Market Update
Market Update We looked at natural gas prices during mid-March compared to prices during the pandemic. The graph below plots forward natural gas prices at two points in time. The grey line represents the forward curve as of January 29, 2021 and the blue line as of March 18, 2022. It is important to note…
Read MoreWhat a Difference a Year Makes
What a Difference a Year Makes Last September, our COO, Jim McDonnell, was the lead-off speaker for the first session of the Maryland Clean Energy Center’s Energy Economy Speaker Series. The topic was State of the Sector: Impacts of Covid-19 on the Energy Economy. Jim provided a broad energy market update and then focused on…
Read More10,000 Maniacs Were Right
The dramatic decline of natural gas prices was the focus of our last article (These Are Days to Remember). As we noted then, in real dollars, natural gas prices were near all-time lows. Since then, natural gas prices have continued to fall. Yesterday the November futures contract settled at $2.033 per mmBtu. The last time…
Read MoreAre Crude Oil and Natural Gas Reconciling?
Crude oil prices have dropped 38% since June for two reasons. Shale oil production in the US Bakken, Eagle Ford, and Permian basins has increased dramatically – by more than 4 million barrels per day since 2008. At the same time, worldwide demand for crude oil has declined as a result of slowing economies in…
Read MoreWhat Does Volatility Look Like?
This article looks at how cold weather led to great volatility in real-time wholesale electricity prices during January 2014 in the PJM Interconnection (PJM). The month of January 2014 was the coldest in decades in the US as a Polar Vortex pushed its way into the Midwest, South, and East. Winter electricity use in the…
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