Nymex

NYMEX Natural Gas Contract Setting Open Interest Records

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The CME Group announced on Tuesday the 7th consecutive open interest record for its benchmark Henry Hub Natural Gas futures contract as prices have been rising from their historic doldrums. The number of open interest contracts on Monday March 25th was 1,399,967.

Open interest refers to the total number of futures contracts that are not closed or delivered on a given day. The recent NYMEX activity appears to indicate that traders and large market participants like hedge funds expect the US natural gas futures contract value to increase over the near term. Keep reading →

Published March 27, 2013 at 8:30 AM

Oil Sands Developers: Market Access Issues Weigh Even As Tech Promises Emissions Reductions

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It’s telling that a panel discussion about using technology to reduce the environmental impacts associated with Canadian oil sands development ended up mainly being about dire market access issues impacting producers.

At the FT Global Investment Series: Focus on Canada conference held in New York City this week, corporate executives were clearly concerned about reducing greenhouse gas emissions from oil sands projects, but they were also very concerned about the billions of dollars being lost from commodity price differentials between Canadian heavy oil and other grades. Keep reading →

Published March 15, 2013 at 2:30 PM

What Is Set to Drive Natural Gas Prices Lower?

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Prices for natural gas are headed lower after a hot summer showed signs of the first boost in pricing for the fuel on which the US energy sector is increasingly relying.

With the approaching end of the cooling season and continued strong supply from domestic gas producers, prices are likely to revert to their earlier trading range between $2 and $3 per million BTU, predicted Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy and Economic Research, a Massachusetts consultancy. Keep reading →

Published August 14, 2012 at 2:00 PM

Handling Big Data in the Energy Business and Beyond

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How do you get a weak signal from noisy data? That’s the question Blu Putnam, Managing Director and Chief Economist at exchange operator CME Group says will dominate the future of data analysis.

At a time when everyone is suffering from information overload, everyone also has a choice to make about how they handle and analyze the data they work with and often live by. While Putnam takes a ‘Bayesian’ approach (learn more about that here), others are trusting in everything from aggressive data mining to narrowing down data needs to suit desired outcomes (learn more about a wind energy startup based on that premise here). Keep reading →

Published July 12, 2012 at 8:30 AM

Using Technology to give Energy Trading the Transparency Treatment

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What trading technology used to look like at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 1986.

Energy trading has long been divided between the headline prices everyone can see on the news and the much longer list of prices that exist in the traditionally more freewheeling over the counter markets. Keep reading →

Published May 22, 2012 at 3:00 PM