What's really driving us here is continued concern about how much damage has been done by either Rita or Katrina. It looks like things are a little worse than originally assumed, and things aren't coming back on line as quickly as thought.
Selling is less aggressive down here than it has been.
People who can switch from heating oil to gas are doing it. That's what's bringing in more industrial demand.
Winter is a done deal. The big concern now is we're going to have too much gas.
You are getting back toward levels where industrial consumers can make money. So I do think you're seeing some more industrial demand come back in.
We're way oversold. They've thrown about as much bearish news at this market as you possibly can.
We still have a huge overhang of storage. This is the time of year when you get seasonal lows ahead of summer and hurricane season.
The fact that we are in such good shape with storage is what the market is focused on now.
We've had a big sell-off in the last couple of days and with the cold weather coming, there's some short covering.
We had some cooler weather and you had that snow front move through the Midwest.
Crude oil has broken out of a six-week trading range.
There's still a lot of gas out there, but we're finally going to get some near-normal temperatures.
RSI reached the lowest level ever in the history of the February contract.
This is what we should do when it's 54 degrees in Chicago in January.
There's already a hurricane and heat premium built into these prices.
It looks like crude is taking a bit of a breather.
Even where cooling is above normal the weather is pretty mild. The market is extremely weak this morning.
It's still under most people's radar screen right now. The public has absolutely no idea how high prices are going to be this year. It's going to be mind-boggling.
The average person has no idea how expensive things are going to be this winter. It's not going to sink in until they get the first bill, and then the politicians will be screaming in the streets.
They have to pull gas. And if there's no usage for it, that just puts more pressure on wholesale prices, which in turn puts more pressure on futures.
All those factors combined have really smacked this market back down. You're going to have a lot of industrial demand go off line.
The market has factored in a lot of damage beforehand, in anticipation that this storm will equal or exceed the damage caused by Ivan. Prices may fall as reports come in.