This year, natural gas spot prices have declined more than 46%. The price decline driver was the warmer-than-expected winter across Europe and the United States. While our last week's price prediction was about $3/MMBtu in February, with the current condition, reaching this price by the end of this month would be challenging. For the whole year of 2023, the price would be around $3.5/MMBtu.
In line with Oil prices, natural gas prices fell Friday on worries that expected rising interest rates would make the Recession unavoidable in the US and EU this year. On top of that, recession concerns can slow down the demand while we have more companies ready to ship their LNG gas worldwide. Besides that, these concerns increase the USD demand and value to a six-week high above 104, which can increase the pressure on commodities prices by making them more expensive for foreign buyers.
With this change and the evolution of the markets, European natural gas futures fell to their lowest level in 17 months. Its current price trades more than 80% lower than its August peak.
From the technical point of view, and as you can see below Natural gas daily figure, under $3.60, remains bearish, while the key resistance sits at $5.30, which seems unreachable any time soon.
