EUROPEAN gas futures prices for deliveries in March 2023, the end of the heating season, have been falling since early December, as traders become more confident there will be enough to satisfy consumption this winter. Prices are currently trading around €106/MWh down from €150 on December 7:
U.S. CONTAINER trade through the nine most important container ports was equivalent to just 2.72 million TEUs in October, down from 2.94 million TEUs in October 2021, and the lowest for the time of year since 2017, as manufacturers and retailers attempted to reduce excess inventories by reducing new orders:
¹ Running a “test” of the cold-start process at Drax on December 16 just four days after the coal-fired power plant received instructions (subsequently cancelled) to light up and prepare to generate for “real” on December 12 to help with insufficient reserve margins is interesting timing.
U.S. DISTILLATE inventories increased by +1 million barrels to 120 million barrels over the seven days ending on December 9. Stocks are still -16 million barrels (-12%, -0.79 standard deviations) below the pre-pandemic five-year average, but the deficit has halved from -34 million barrels (-24%, -2.05 standard deviations) on October 7. The biggest seasonal inventory accumulation for at least two decades has erased a large part of the previous shortage:
¹ When policymakers appeal to “patriotism,” or decry its absence, it usually means they have run out of good arguments. When I hear arguments based on patriotism and its variants, I am instinctively suspicious about the speaker’s motivations, and try to work out how someone is trying to mislead or distract attention from their own failures.
² Coal-fired units need roughly four hours to reach full generation from a warm start and 10-12 hours from a cold start. The grid’s instruction to start warming up ensures the two massive coal-fired units at Drax will be available to help meet electricity consumption during the evening peak on December 12. Before privatisation of the U.K. electricity industry, the state-owned Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) would often keep at least one coal-fired power station warmed up but not generating so it could be brought into service at relatively short notice. Long ramping times for coal-fired units, and the enormous quantity of fuel burned before commercial generation starts, are one reason gas-fired units are more efficient and have largely supplanted them.
CHINA’s semiconductor (integrated circuits) trade – export earnings have grown rapidly, but the cost of imports has risen even faster, so the country’s trade balance has become increasingly adverse:
JKempEnergy.com 