Natural Gas Prices
These national gas price charts show how the natural gas futures contracts have traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX).  Natural gas and other commodity futures prices can be found at www.nymex.com, www.cme.com, www.futuresource.com and www.ino.com.

This short-term strip (Jun-Aug) is trading at $11.45, which is 38% higher than the Q1 update. The winter ended colder than forecasters were predicting, and storage inventories dropped below their levels of the past two years, but remain at the 5-year average. Speculators are driving this market. US DOE forecast says prices should be closer to $8 than $11. Industry players are waiting for the bubble to burst.

The 12-month strip of natural gas continues to astound as money shifts from equity markets into commodities. Market fundamentals do not support these prices, but technical traders are ruling the day. Large speculators appear to be executing spread trades where they are shorting the US dollar and buying crude oil. The resulting run-up in crude oil is driving the entire energy complex – gasoline, jet fuel, heating oil, diesel, natural gas – to record highs.



Electric Customer Switching Statistics
These charts show what percentage of electrical load (in MegaWatts) has been switched away from the regulated local utilities to the competing marketers. For more information, visit the website listed for each state.

Two of the seven utility service territories in Pennsylvania offer an opportunity for customer switching at this time. In Duquesne Light and Penn Power, virtually all of the large load companies are being served by deregulated marketers.
www.oca.state.pa.us

Customer switching is active throughout most of the state. The rules and rates charged by Ameren and ComEd have changed in 2008 and are too complex to describe here. Contact your Corporate United representative and Independent Energy Consultants to review your opportunities.
www.icc.illinois.gov