The U.S. natural gas market is facing slightly greater upside price risk through 2016 because of natural gas demand growth. While low drilling costs and high oil prices are expected to maintain strong gas supply growth, potentially leading to pipeline and storage operational constraints this fall, signs of stronger demand over the longer term have started to emerge.
Due to substantial incentives to burn more natural gas BENTEK believes switching to gas will only increase in the residential, commercial, industrial and power sectors. The base-case forecasts currently are conservative, totaling about 4.0 Bcf/d of total gas demand growth through 2016, but there is a high risk that demand will grow even faster.
BENTEK’s Market Alert, Natural Gas Demand: Waking the Sleeping Giant
, provides an update on BENTEK’s five-year forecasts for each of the U.S. natural gas supply and demand sectors including power burn, industrial demand, residential/commercial gas demand, LNG imports, Canadian imports and production.
This Market Alert is the fifth and final installment of the Forward Curve Suite™
, a BENTEK report series that examines the top natural gas market issues for the 2010 to 2015 timeframe. This market analysis package includes BENTEK’s Forward Curve Quarterly™
and a five-part Market Alert series. The Forward Curve Quarterly
is a quarterly assessment of U.S. supply, demand and prices for the upcoming five-year term.