June natural gas futures finished up 3.5 cents on Monday, closing at $4.090/MMBtu. The front month contract has since extended recent gains and was last seen trading up 6.9 cents at $4.159/MMBtu. [...]

The EIA reported a 99 Bcf injection into natural gas storage for the week ending 5/10/2013, inside of analyst predictions of an injection from 84 Bcf to 106 Bcf. Working gas in storage was 1,964 Bcf as of last Friday, 694 Bcf less than last year’s 2,658 Bcf stock and 83 Bcf below the 5-year average of 2,047 Bcf. [...]

Since our last report posted on March 12th 2013, Natural Gas prices continued on their recent upside sprint that started on Feb 22nd and reached the mechanically derived upside Head & Shoulders price target of $3.89MMBtU originally posted on our report of September 14th 2012. [...]

In 2013 ratepayers in New York and New Jersey may want to evaluate switching to competitive supply as several utilities lower the mandatory hourly pricing threshold for retail customers. All New Jersey utilities have filed a proposal to reduce the hourly price threshold from 750kW to 500kW effective June 2013. For the same time period, New York utility Niagara Mohawk (National Grid) has also proposed to reduce their respective threshold to 250kW. Another New York utility, Orange & Rockland, will decrease their threshold from 500kW to 300kW in May of this year. Customers on the hourly rate with the utility will be exposed to the volatility of the market when pricing electricity. The potential for steep price spikes often dissuades customers from indexing their energy use, and those that prefer budget certainty will instead migrate to a competitive supplier for a fixed price contract. [...]