Gas prices have been struggling this month, with warm weather the chief culprit. How is the current winter stacking up? Well, the HDD count from Oct 1 through Jan 31 (next 4 day forecast assumed correct) puts this winter ahead of last winter by a 52 HDD margin.
But we are behind the 20 year mean by a solid 299 HDD, which represents a tremendous amount of heating and electric load for natural gas. I'm using the CPC numbers for gas-utility weighted HDDs in the calculation. This suggests that gas could be very, very expensive had the weather been close to the mean, perhaps aiming toward a sub 1 TCF storage carryout in March/April. That's a number that would light a fire, so to speak, under the Henry Hub forward strip.
