Weather and Inventory Are Driving Natural Gas Prices
Natural gas rig count
Baker Hughes will release the weekly US crude oil and natural gas rig count report on September 4, 2015. For the week ending August 28, 2015, Baker Hughes reported that the natural gas rig count fell by eight to 202. Likewise, the active US natural gas rig count fell by one to 210 for the week ending August 21, 2015. The natural gas rig count fell for the seventh week in the last ten weeks.
Impact
For the week ending August 28, 2015, the total US crude oil and natural gas rig count fell by eight to 877. The current crude oil and natural gas rig count is 1,037 lower than the level of 1,914 in 2014. It also means that it’s 54% below the levels last year. The US crude oil and natural gas rig count fell due to the catastrophic fall in oil and gas prices due to oversupply concerns.
Currently, the active US natural gas rig count is 40% lower than the level of 338 in 2014. The long-term lower natural gas prices affect the drilling activity. They also affect drillers like Superior (SPN), Schlumberger (SLB), and Halliburton (HAL).
Falling natural gas prices also impact natural gas ETFs like the Energy Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLE) and the SPDR Oil and Gas ETF (XOP). These ETFs moved in the direction of natural gas prices in yesterday’s trade. They rose slightly by 0.28% and 0.49% at the close of trade on September 3, 2015.
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