The old saying ‘time flies when you are having fun’ means that when you are engaged in enjoyable activities, time seems to pass by very quickly, often because you are focused on the moment.  Within California’s natural gas landscape, the saying is fitting given that it was two years ago around this time that the daily news headlines were on the front page given that both Citygate trading hubs were averaging in the teens and exploded up to plus $50 as the system was stretched thin as a colder start to winter was combined with adjacent regions leaning on the natural gas-fired generation fleet for megawatts thus increasing power burns within SoCal Gas and PGAE.  It did not help that the limitations to Aliso Canyon’s storage facility was still in play and Mother Nature was holding onto the drought-like hydro conditions through Q4-2022.

Figure 1 | SoCal Citygate Cash Price Settles – 2022 through Present

Once the calendar turned, there was no looking back when it came to Mother Nature changing her mood as January 2023 saw the atmospheric river system show up in groves, which changed the in-state hydro landscape over the course of two months from drought conditions to a Water Year that ranked in the top three all-time.....