Energy Procurement Blog

Industry experts at the LDC Gas Forum Southeast in Atlanta stated that most increases in gas demand are not expected to occur for several years. With the mild winter and heavy production, there is no immediate way to help improve gas consumption.

What’s on the horizon that can and will affect our energy resources? Once again, we must turn our attention to China. Let’s face it – one fifth of the world’s population lives in China! Since it has become industrialized it is consuming more energy than ever before! Consider the following facts:

• By 2025, China will build TEN New York-sized cities!
• By 2030, China will add more new city-dwellers than the entire U.S. population.
  
• China already consumes twice as much steel as the U.S., Europe and Japan combined.
  
• China has more than 50 million vehicles on the road...

The last time we saw the stock market take a dive like we saw on Monday, August 8th was in October of 2008. Sometimes referred to as the Crash of 2008, it set a record weekly loss of 1,874 points or 18.1% during the week of October 6th.

So we began thinking - how would a downturn in August affect the price of natural gas? Looking back at the crashes of 1929, 1987 and 2008, they share one common element...

The energy market is a fast paced, ever changing medium. As an example, just look at the volatility in the natural gas market over the past few years!

The red line shows the ebb and flows of the ever changing NYMEX Natural Gas futures, while the blue line shows the changes in the S&P 500...