Bell tolls on long-term gas supply

摘要

Recent gas supply history is disquieting in North America, but the intermediate term may be more disturbing. While everyone is currently busy forecasting the end of life as we know it because of a temporary overhang of natural gas in storage, we have a somewhat contrarian view. That is, that excess gas is a temporary anomaly and that the underlying trend continues to be one of gas rationing, price volatility, growth in power plant usage and further industrial demand destruction. The year 2005 was extraordinary in the number of events that affected the North American gas market. Over the first 8 months, we had good demand and reasonable supply. Industrial consumption increased, and the fleet of new combined-cycle power generators hit their stride.