Apologies to our readers for the missed posts over the past two weeks. We’ve been busy with in-house business that required pretty much constant attention. But now we’re back.

And we missed all the fun. NYMEX spent the past three weeks losing its nerve.

When we last checked in, NYMEX was in the midst of a brief flirtation with +$5.00 pricing. A slightly sub-expectation weekly report had just sent it below the $5.00 mark. It has been downhill ever since. Yesterday, NYMEX scraped $4.30 for the first time since this rally began almost six weeks ago. Today, a slightly sub-expectation weekly report is giving speculators an excuse for a bit of a rebound.

We’d love to tell you what happened while we were busy…so we will. Nothing. Conditions in the market have held pretty much steady since this whole thing began. The weather continues to be hot throughout most of the country. Oil is still spewing into the Gulf, and the Obama Administration is still pushing for a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling. The hurricane season has yet to have any impact on production. The economy continues to send mixed, muted signals about a recovery that still has not really started. And the weekly storage report continues to come in a few Bcf below projections, losing ground to last year’s record levels but still more than 10% above the 5-year average. 

We could have reported these facts at any point in time over the past several months…we have, in fact. Yet NYMEX has seen fit to rise and fall by almost a full dollar over this same period of time.

If we follow the patterns of the last few months, we look for NYMEX to hold steady for the next few days at its current, post-report level of $4.60. There’s been a fits-and-starts quality to the market lately: big jumps in either direction are followed by several days of relative calm, then another big jump. Which means you can relax for a couple of days, but then keep your eyes open. You wouldn’t want to miss the fun.