US EIA sees cooler natgas prices in July
Average spot prices for natural gas at Henry Hub cooled a little in July in the wake of the June outage at the Freeport LNG terminal, but showed robust strength through July as gas demand remained high for power generation, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) said August 9 in its August Short-Term Energy Outlook.
The average price at Henry Hub slipped to $7.28/mnBtu in July from $7.70/mnBtu in June, but spot prices rose by almost 50% through the month, to $8.37/mnBtu on July 29 from $5.73/mnBtu on July 1 as demand from the power sector rose to meet air conditioning loads.
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“We expect the Henry Hub price to average $7.54/mnBtu in the second half of 2022 and then fall to an average of $5.10/mnBtu in 2023 amid rising natural gas production,” the EIA said.
Dry natural gas production is forecast to 96.6bn ft3/day this year, 3bn ft3/day higher than in 2021, and 100bn ft3/day in 2023.
The EIA says US LNG exports are forecast to average 10bn ft3/day in Q3 this year and 11.2bn ft3/day for all of 2022, a 14% increase from 2021, as new export capacity is added and Freeport LNG comes back online. The US became the largest LNG exporter in the world in the first half this year, and the EIA expects 2023 exports to average 12.7bn ft3/day.