Featured Articles
| Monday Jan 9, 2017 | |
| Over the New Years holiday break, we drove down to visit my mother-in-law who lives in Pismo Beach, CA. We flew into San Jose, CA and decided to take our time and drive the scenic Highway 1 (Hwy 1) along the coast. For those of you who grew up in Southern California, you know it better as 'The 1', but for this newsletter, we will continue to call it Hwy 1. I have never done it before, so I was excited as the road takes you past a couple of old power plants that have been discussed in great lengths over the years, they are Moss Landing and Morro Bay. » read more | |
| Friday Jan 6, 2017 | |
| There is so much to write about these days. I am a fan of both sports and games. In the “games” category, the World Chess Championship was held in New York City between November 11th and November 30th. After 12 games the defending champion Magnus Carlsen was tied with the challenger, Sergey Karjakin, each had a single win with the remaining games ending as draws. Much like college football, ties are broken by playing a modified version of the game. They break the tie with a series of rapid chess games, where Carlsen won two games (after two more draws) to ... » read more | |
| Thursday Jan 5, 2017 | |
| As we begin the New Year we are starting to see normal conditions return to the energy space as people go back to work after some well earned vacation. However, power burns may have taken too much time off as gas demand slumped significantly heading into the back portion of December. A dip down in burns due to lack of demand through the holidays was to be expected, however power burns sank well below the previous two years. In fact, the structurally weak burns have continued into the New Year as January 4th saw only 21.2 BCF of ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Jan 4, 2017 | |
| As we sat down last Friday, the bilateral power market was trading around the New Year long weekend. With the weather forecast showing colder weather moving into the Pacific Northwest starting on Monday and increasing for Tuesday, load serving entities took no chances of being short and Midc's heavy load ran up to $63. Some of this had to do with Sumas gas trading at very high levels but the other part was the Pacific Northwest had to make sure most of the MW flowing on the Paci and Nob transmission lines stayed at home. Since the price mentioned ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Jan 3, 2017 | |
| As we left for the long holiday weekend and to celebrate the end of 2016 and the beginning of 2017, little did we know Mother Nature would be performing a magic trick on the overall weather across the country. As we left, the 8 to 14 day forecast (Jan 5th - Jan 11th) from NOAA was showing extreme cold weather across Canada and most of the middle to upper portion of the Lower 48. As we sit here this morning, all the purple blobs have disappeared and the only regions with a hint of blue are the Pacific Northwest/Plains and the East Coastal states. Figure 1 | ... » read more | |
| Friday Dec 30, 2016 | |
| If you are reading this, you are probably like me and find yourself working during the week between Christmas and New Year’s. It may be because you have urgent year-end work obligations. Or perhaps you used up all of your vacation time for the year. If it is the latter, you may be using this time to attend to work matters that have been overlooked or put off for weeks or months – you know, getting your house in order before 2017 comes rolling in. That’s how I am spending my time – equal parts catching up on unfinished business ... » read more | |
| Thursday Dec 29, 2016 | |
| As 2016 is coming to an end, Mother Nature is ringing in the New Year with a purple blob hovering over the Western portion of Canada and dipping down into the Pacific Northwest and Rockies. In the 6-10 day period, it is stretching into the Dakotas and Midwest. Figure 1 | NOAA 8-14 day period Such a forecast has shifted the Northwest Sumas gas price up quite a bit for the January contract over the past few trading days. Figure 2 | Northwest Sumas January Contract Price This makes sense given how the Sumas gas price indexed during the last cold spell during ... » read more | |
| Wednesday Dec 28, 2016 | |
| One of the most intriguing stories we have been following since the onset of "Polar Vortex 2016" has been the response from the coal stack in PJM. As temperatures began to fall heading into this month coal burns ramped in across the ISO reaching a peak output on December 16th. Coming out of the Christmas holiday things have settled across the power markets as temperatures return to slightly above normal across the Ohio Valley. We thought it would be a worth while exercise to look over the spike in coal generation with a little more ... » read more | |
| Tuesday Dec 27, 2016 | |
| Month to date, we have seen much below normal air dominate the North American climate. The already tight natural gas supply demand balance has only managed to get tighter because of the gain in weather adjusted ResCom demand. After setting an all time high this past November, the Lower 48 natural gas inventory has dropped back to the five year average. The current withdrawal pace will set a new record for the month of December. Figure 1 | EIA US Natural Gas Inventory as of 12/16/2016 The big withdrawals are more than just the ongoing story of lower year on ... » read more | |
| Friday Dec 23, 2016 | |
| After taking a year hiatus, the EnergyGPS Bowling holiday party was back in the mix. We locked in the lanes this past Monday afternoon for some team building and camaraderie as we wind down the year. As we make the 6 block trek, the stories of years past start to be told like the time I had to strike out in the 10th frame (three strikes in a row is called a turkey) to wind by 1 point. Or the many times individuals get two strikes in a row and on the scoreboard flashes a rock solid shirtless chest with two big X's on the biceps. The ... » read more | |