Natural gas prices are rising and could be the most expensive in 13 years this winter

Published

3 years ago

September 10, 2021

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Flames from a flaring pit near a well in the Bakken Oil Field. The primary component of natural gas is methane, which is odorless when it comes directly out of the gas well. In addition to methane, natural gas typically contains other hydrocarbons such as ethane, propane, butane, and pentanes.

Orjan F. Ellingvag | Corbis News | Getty Images

Natural gas prices have doubled this year and are expected to continue to rise, resulting in larger winter heating bills for some consumers and higher costs for electric utilities.

Natural gas is plentiful in the United States and has been cheap for years, so the jump in prices this year is eye popping. It has also lifted the shares of companies that specialize in natural gas production, like EQT, Range Resources, Cabot Oil and Gas and Antero Resources.

In the futures market, the natural gas contract for October rose above $5 per one million British thermal units, or mmBtus, for the first time since February, 2014. Besides electricity and heating demand, natural gas is an important feed stock and is used in the processing of chemicals, fertilizers, paper and glass, among other products.

“We haven’t had tight supplies of natural gas in years. We’re staring that down this year,” said John Kilduff, partner with Again Capital.

Natural gas prices have been caught in their own perfect storm, of lower supplies and rising demand. Prices raced higher, first as unprecedented heat stoked air conditioning demand across the U.S., particularly in the Northwest. As a result, less gas was put into storage for winter months, during the key summer injection period.

Add to that any colder than normal winter weather and prices could jump more. “Anything closer to [or colder than] a full standard-deviation form average would likely trigger a price spike to cause demand destruction with gas above $10/mmBtu,” Goldman Sachs analysts note. Gas prices were last that high in 2008.

Kilduff said natural gas is tied tightly into the economy, and for a long period prices did not matter. Now, utilities will pay more and so will some consumers who have real time pricing schemes. “You could easily see it reach $6 and you could see it get to $8 to $10,” he said. “Any early season cold weather outbreak will juice this thing.”

The upward pressure on gas prices is global, and since the U.S. is an exporter, prices in North America are now more influenced by prices in other markets.

“We’ve seen it all over the last year with the pandemic. We saw natural gas prices around the world at $2. It was $2 here in the U.S., $2 in Europe and $2 in Asia,” said Cheniere Energy CEO Jack Fusco on CNBC. “As the economies began to ramp back up, and countries and companies worldwide decided natural gas was the fuel of choice for clean energy transmission, the demand has just skyrocketed.”

Fusco said prices for the same gas that is $5 in the U.S. is now $20 or more in Europe and Asia. He also said his company, which exports liquified natural gas, is sold out of 90% of its production for the next 20 years.

Now, the U.S. industry is also suffering from lower production due to Hurricane Ida, with 77.3% of Gulf of Mexico production still shut in. According to the Energy Information Administration, the level of gas in U.S. storage is 7.4% below the five-year average and 16.8% below the level last year at this time.

The dynamic of rising demand and lower inventories has been attracting investors into the shares of natural gas producers, as well as the United States Natural Gas Fund ETF.

“I look at the natural gas situation. The storage levels are way below historic norms,” said Leon Cooperman, chairman and CEO of the Omega Family Office. Cooperman said on CNBC Thursday that his biggest positions are contrarian holdings in the energy market.

Natural gas prices are flaring as the Biden Administration is pressing for higher dependencene on renewable energy in the electricity market. On Wednesday, the White House called for solar energy to power nearly half the electric grid by 2050. It is now just 3% of the power supply.

But natural gas is likely to remain an important fuel for years to come. The EIA, in its short-term outlook, said natural gas should provide 35% of power generation in 2021 and 34% in 2022. The government forecast the average price of natural gas this year will be $4.69 per mmBtus.

The EIA said the share of natural gas as a generation fuel will decline through next year because of the anticipated increase in renewable sources, but also coal.

“As a result of the higher expected natural gas prices, the forecast share of electricity generation from coal rises from 20% in 2020 to about 24% in both 2021 and 2022,” according to EIA. “New additions of solar and wind generating capacity are offset somewhat by reduced generation from hydropower this year, resulting in the forecast share of all renewables in U.S. electricity generation to average 20% in 2021, about the same as last year, before rising to 22% in 2022.”

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Cybertruck backlog runs out, Model S gets stuck, GM hits a sales milestone

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7 hours ago

November 5, 2024

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Cybertruck backlog runs out, Model S gets stuck, GM hits a sales milestone

On today’s episode of Quick Charge, Tesla’s Cybertruck is now available in Canada – and, like in the US, there’s no waiting! Plus, we’ve got an “actually” smart summon Tesla that’s actually stuck, GM reaches a sales milestone, and we get a brand-new title sponsor!

Today’s episode is the first with our new title sponsor, BLUETTI – a leading provider of portable power stations, solar generators, and energy storage systems.

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New episodes of Quick Charge are recorded, usually, Monday through Thursday (and sometimes Sunday). We’ll be posting bonusLucid proves than an EV company can keep its promises while Xiaomi teams up with Chevrolet and Honda to prove – at least conceptually – that records are made to be broken. audio content from time to time as well, so be sure to follow and subscribe so you don’t miss a minute of Electrek’s high-voltage daily news!

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Environment

This ‘supercharger on wheels’ brings fast charging to you [update]

Published

9 hours ago

November 4, 2024

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This 'supercharger on wheels' brings fast charging to you [update]

Mobile car care company Yoshi Mobility launched a DC fast charging EV mobile unit that it likens to “a supercharger on wheels.”

November 4, 2024 update: Yoshi Mobility will only be charging EVs on the side of the road now – it announced today that it’s selling its fleet fueling operation to EZFill Holdings (Nasdaq: EZFL).

It was originally founded as a direct-to-consumer, mobile fueling business in 2016, but now it’s going to focus on mobile EV charging, virtual vehicle inspections for partners like Uber and Turo, and onsite preventative maintenance.

Bryan Frist, Yoshi Mobility’s CEO & cofounder, said, “By spinning off our fuel business and focusing all of our energy on solving hair-on-fire problems that fleet owners face, we are meeting the changing needs of enterprise customers while making the future of transportation safer, cleaner, and more sustainable.”

May 22, 2024: Yoshi Mobility saw that its existing customers needed mobile EV charging in places where infrastructure has yet to be installed, so the Nashville-based company decided to bring the mountain to Moses.

“We recognized a demand among our customers for convenient daily charging, reliable private charging networks, and proper charging infrastructure to support their fleet vehicles as they transition to electric,” said Dan Hunter, Yoshi Mobility’s chief EV officer and cofounder.

The company says its 240 kW mobile DC fast charger, which can turn “any EV” into a mobile charging unit, is the first fully electric mobile charger available. It can provide multiple charges in a single trip but doesn’t detail how they charge the DC fast charger or who manufactured it. (I asked for more details, and they replied that they won’t disclose client names or the manufacturer of its DC fast charger yet.)

Yoshi is launching its mobile charger on two GM BrightDrop Zevo 600s and will introduce additional vehicles throughout 2024. It aims for full commercialization by Q1 2025. (I wonder if the Zevo 600 ever charges itself? Yes, I asked that too.)

Yoshi Mobility says it’s already deployed its EV charging solutions to service “major OEMs, autonomous vehicle companies, and rideshare operators” across the US. Its initial customers are made up of large EV operators managing “hundreds” of light-duty vehicles requiring up to 1 megawatt of energy per day that don’t yet have grid-connected EV chargers. I’ve asked Yoshi for details of who it’s working with, and will update if they share that info.

The company says pricing is based on location and enterprise charging needs. Once under contract for service, the service will be deployed to US-based customers within 10 days.

To date, Yoshi Mobility has raised more than $60 million, with investments from GM Ventures, Bridgestone, ExxonMobil, and Y-Combinator in Silicon Valley.

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Marqeta shares plunge more than 30% on big forecast miss

Published

9 hours ago

November 4, 2024

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Marqeta shares plunge more than 30% on big forecast miss

Marqeta celebrates its initial public offering at the Nasdaq on June 9, 2021.

Source: The Nasdaq

Marqeta shares tumbled more than 30% in extended trading on Monday after the company issued weaker-than-expected guidance for the fourth quarter.

Here’s how the company did compared with Wall Street estimates, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:

Loss per share: 6 cents adjusted vs. a loss of 5 cents expected
Revenue: $128 million vs. $128.1 million expected

While third-quarter results showed a slight disappointment on the top and bottom lines, Marqeta’s forecast for the current period was more concerning.

The payment processing firm said revenue in the fourth quarter will increase 10% to 12% from a year earlier. Analysts were looking for growth of more than 17%, according to LSEG.

Marqeta, which primarily functions as a card-issuing platform, attributed the guidance miss to “heightened scrutiny of the banking environment and specific customer program changes.” The company has been struggling for a while, and its stock is now down more than 80% from its peak in 2021, the year it went public. The stock was down 15% for the year prior to the report.

Total processing volume of $74 billion was up more than 30% from a year earlier. Net revenue and gross profit were up 18% and 24%, respectively.

Marqeta’s digital commerce business sells payment technology designed to detect potential fraud and ensure that money is properly routed. It also issues customized physical cards that look like a credit or debit card that can be used for point-of-sale purchases.

The company has been trying to break into the buy now, pay later business with a recently launched product called Marqeta Flex. The service brings BNPL from lenders such as Affirm or Klarna to any credit card wherever Mastercard and Visa are accepted.

“It’s an orchestration layer, but it’s tied to issuing and processing and disputes and chargebacks,” CEO Simon Khalaf told CNBC at Money2020 in Las Vegas last week. “So it is not actually a Wild West in BNPL. It is actually very well established. And there is a reason why a lot of people are jumping to it.”