Texas Railroad Commission member Charles Mathews said he was concerned about the lower levels of gas in storage in Texas as winter approaches. During the winter time, there's never enough production. We're always producing flat out all of the time. We handle the extra load demand by pulling gas from storage. The low amount of storage makes it difficult to predict how high prices could go this winter, said Wicklund of Dain Rauscher Wessels.
All bets are off.
We're only 20 percent into winter. This raises the possibility of more instances in which gas suppliers cut off gas to noncritical users such as manufacturers, chemical processors and the like. Last winter, the United States finished the heating season with about a trillion cubic feet in storage. At the current rate, U.S. storage may be only a half trillion cubic feet at winter's end, he said. Robinson said at some point, it will be cheaper for utilities to cut off customers than to keep bidding natural gas higher.