Short-Term Energy Outlook

Natural Gas

The Henry Hub natural gas spot price averaged $2.64/million British thermal units (MMBtu) in May, almost unchanged from April. EIA expects strong growth in U.S. natural gas production to put downward pressure on prices in 2019. EIA expects Henry Hub natural gas spot prices will average $2.77/MMBtu in 2019, down 38 cents/MMBtu from 2018. EIA expects natural gas prices in 2020 will again average $2.77/MMBtu.

EIA forecasts that U.S. dry natural gas production will average 90.6 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in 2019, up 7.2 Bcf/d from 2018. EIA expects natural gas production will continue to grow in 2020, albeit at a slower rate, averaging 91.8 Bcf/d next year.

U.S. natural gas exports averaged 9.9 Bcf/d in 2018, and EIA forecasts that they will rise by 2.5 Bcf/d in 2019 and by 2.9 Bcf/d in 2020. Rising exports reflect increases in liquefied natural gas exports as new facilities come online. Rising natural gas exports are also the result of an expected increase in pipeline exports to Mexico.

EIA estimates that natural gas inventories ended March at 1.2 trillion cubic feet (Tcf), 15% lower than levels from a year earlier and 28% lower than the five-year (2014–18) average. EIA forecasts that natural gas storage injections will outpace the previous five-year average during the 2019 April-through-October injection season and that inventories will reach almost 3.8 Tcf at the end of October, which would be 17% higher than October 2018 levels and about equal to the five-year average.

U.S. Natural Gas Summary
	2017	2018	2019projected	2020projected
Prices	(dollars per thousand cubic feet)
Henry Hub Spot	3.10	3.27	2.88	2.87
Residential Sector	10.86	10.49	10.60	10.92
Commercial Sector	7.86	7.82	7.78	7.83
Industrial Sector	4.10	4.20	4.06	4.00
Supply	(billion cubic feet per day)
Marketed Production	79.99	89.69	97.57	99.07
Dry Gas Production	74.77	83.40	90.60	91.79
Pipeline Imports	8.12	7.77	7.48	7.41
LNG Imports	0.21	0.21	0.21	0.22
Consumption	(billion cubic feet per day)
Residential Sector	12.09	13.63	13.90	13.38
Commercial Sector	8.67	9.53	9.61	9.13
Industrial Sector	21.78	22.70	23.23	23.72
Electric Power Sector	25.39	29.11	29.72	30.18
Total Consumption	74.32	82.08	84.17	84.38
Primary Assumptions	(percent change from previous year)
Heating Degree Days	-1.3	11.7	-0.1	-2.6
Cooling Degree Days	-8.3	11.1	-13.0	-0.0
Commercial Employment	1.7	1.6	1.8	1.5
Natural-gas-weighted Industrial Production	3.3	2.6	0.4	1.2

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U.S. natural gas prices	XLSX	PNG
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