Executives from 143 oil and gas companies have forecast where Henry Hub natural gas prices will end up this year as part of the Dallas Fed’s latest energy survey.
When asked in the survey what they expected the commodity to be at the end of 2023, the average response was $3.43 per million British thermal units (MMBtu). The survey’s low forecast for the first quarter of 2023 was $1.75 per MMBtu and the high forecast was $12.50 per MMBtu per MMBtu. Henry Hub’s price during the survey’s collection period was $2.23 per MMBtu, the survey showed.
In the fourth quarter 2022 Dallas Fed Energy Survey, when asked what they expected Henry Hub gas to be at the end of 2023, the average response of executives from 149 oil and gas companies delivered was be $5.64 per MMBtu. The low forecast in this survey was $2.50 per MMBtu, while the high forecast was $9.00 per MMBtu. The price during the survey collection period was $5.93 per MMBtu, according to this survey.
In its latest Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), which was released in early March, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) projected that the Henry Hub spot price would average 3, 02 dollars per MMBtu this year. The commodity averaged $6.42 per MMBtu in 2022, the STEO noted.
“The spot price of Henry Hub natural gas in our forecast is about $3 per MMBtu in 2023, down more than 50 percent from last year,” the EIA said in the STEO.
“We had expected almost $5 per MMBtu in the January STEO forecast,” the EIA added.
In the STEO, the EIA revealed that, “as a result of the mild winter and low natural gas consumption in the residential and commercial sectors,” a 2.4 percent, or two billion cubic feet per day, less US natural gas consumption in 2023. than in 2022. The EIA noted in the STEO that natural gas production “was expected to be relatively flat through the remainder of 2023, already that producers are reducing drilling in response to lower prices.”
On March 14, Fitch Solutions Country Risk & Industry Research revealed in a report sent to Rigzone that the company expected the Henry Hub price to average $3.6 per MMBtu in 2023. The Bloomberg Consensus, which was included in the Fitch Solutions report, also projected the commodity to reach $3.6 per MMBtu in 2023.
In a report sent to Rigzone earlier this month, Standard Chartered projected the Henry Hub price to reach $5.40 per MMBtu this year. According to the report, the company expects the commodity to reach $5 per MMBtu in the third quarter of this year and $5.20 per MMBtu in the fourth quarter.
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