What Does a Derecho Look Like?

Late Friday, June 29, 2012 a destructive set of thunderstorms swept through the Mid-Atlantic region. With winds of up to 80 mph, the storms produced extensive damage and left several million utility customers without electricity. The National Weather Service (NWS) refers to this kind of fast-moving, long-lived, large, and violent thunderstorm complex as a “derecho.”…

Read More

What does a warm day look like?

What does a warm day look like? Here are several ways of looking at one particularly warm day – June 21, 2012. The blue line on the graph below shows instantaneous electricity demand in PJM (see note 1). Electricity demand ebbed to 88,367 megawatts at 4:25 AM and then began to rise as temperatures in…

Read More

Long Tailed Fish Swimming East

Markets adjust. There are perhaps few better examples of that adage than the crude oil and natural gas markets. One way of looking at how these two markets adjust is through the rotary rig count. Baker Hughes keeps track of the number of active drilling rigs in the US (and also internationally). Since July 1987,…

Read More

Crude Oil and Natural Gas Move to Different Hemispheres

On December 16, 2011, we looked at the relationship between natural gas and crude oil prices (see “Crude Oil and Natural Gas Get a Divorce” here). We looked at how historically, on an energy equivalent basis ($/mmBtu), crude oil (West Texas Intermediate at Cushing, Oklahoma) traded at about a 50% premium to natural gas at…

Read More

Avalon Energy Services Completes New Energy Supply Contracts on Behalf of Clarion Partners

Avalon Energy Services recently completed an electricity procurement process for five properties in Washington, DC owned by Clarion Partners, LLC. Under the new supply contracts, the five buildings will pay 27% less, in aggregate, than what they currently pay under existing contracts. Avalon Energy Services’ press release related to this was picked up by a…

Read More

Natural Gas Prices Continue to March Down

March is the last month of the five month winter heating season. As of March 30, the level of US working gas in storage was 2,479 BCF. This is an increase during a time of the year when natural gas is historically withdrawn from storage, not injected. The March 30 level is 927 BCF, or…

Read More

Energy Prices Always Go Up (continued)

As discussed on this blog, there is a common perception that energy prices have been, and continue to be, on a one way path upwards. In previous posts we focused on natural gas and showed that rather than rising, natural gas prices have, in fact, fallen dramatically, over both the short run and the long…

Read More

OFO (No Room at the Inn)

Huh? What does OFO mean? First, a step back. The US natural gas pipeline and distribution system can be thought of as a large container with producers injecting natural gas (supply) and customers withdrawing natural gas (demand). Last year, during 2011, the US consumed 24.4 trillion cubic feet (TCF ) of natural gas, or, on…

Read More

Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG)

The development of a liquefied natural gas export trade was identified in a previous article as an influence that would put upward pressure on natural gas prices. To follow is an overview of where the US liquefied natural gas markets have been and where they may be headed. But first, what is liquefied natural gas?…

Read More