While marker participants and investors cautiously ignore banking crises and markets getting ready to move higher, Gas and Oil reserves dropped in the last two weeks, helping the energy prices to move higher.
In the week ending March 24, according to the API report, US crude oil inventories decreased by 6.076 million barrels, compared with market 187K increase expectations and the 3.262 million barrels increase in the last week. It was the most significant drop since last December. In addition, EIA crude oil inventories decreased by 7.489 million barrels, while the market was expecting a 92,000 barrels increase, and last week it raised by 1.117 million barrels. The data was the biggest drop since the week ended November 25 last year.
On the flip side, the EIA report shows higher natural gas storage in the US. US Utilities pulled 47 billion cubics of natural gas from storage last week, lower than the 54 bcf expectations by industry analysts. With these numbers, US gas inventory is 31% higher than the balance at the same time a year ago and 21% up compared to the five-year average for storage.
After publishing these data, Natural Gas prices eased more, but technical indicators show that bears do not have much power to go deeper. 20 and 50 DMA spread gets tighter, and RSI slowly rises from the oversold area. Technical data shows the possible reverse. From the fundamental point of view, as the summer season approaches, which is the season of travel and the peak of factory activity and demand for more energy, we can probably get ready for higher prices.
