"I couldn't possibly fail to disagree with you less."
18 November 2006The Gas Game (follow-up)Last fall, with natural gas prices on the rise, Oklahoma Natural Gas offered to lock in a fixed price for twelve months for any of its residential customers who'd sign on. Noting that said price was almost $2 per dekatherm higher than the price then current, I declined the offer, but for the next twelve months compared the bills I got to the bills I could have had, and wound up $62 and change in the hole. (Painful details here.) The same sort of deal was offered this year, though prices were easing and the proffered fixed price was a buck more than last year. At the time, I wondered:
[I]f we're going to have $11 or $12 gas, I need to lock in this price. But are we going to have $11 or $12 gas? If I knew things like this, I could quit my job and live off the stock market.
Last year's peak price for those of us not on the lock was $12.012 per dekatherm; the 2006-07 fixed-price offer was for $9.25. The Oklahoman reports this morning that there's no general consensus as to where prices will end up:
"It will make a little difference in the later part of winter if prices drop, but utilities have bought and stored a lot of gas at $6 or $7 or higher," [local gas marketer Tony] Say said. "I don't think consumers will see $10 or $12 gas this winter, but I don't think they'll pay much less than $7 or $8."
Bruce Bell of the Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association sees things going higher:
"I think we're liable to see prices head up from where they are now. I have a tendency to think we've had a couple of fairly easy winters and are more liable to have a colder winter."
Of course, if you have the correct political stance, you simply accuse everyone of price manipulation, and you don't have to worry about stuff like this. Posted at 10:09 AM to Family Joules"Of course, if you have the correct political stance, you simply accuse everyone of price manipulation, and you don't have to worry about stuff like this." Of course! It's so simple now! It's your fault! I blame you, and the mailman, and the girl at the Taco Bell drive-thru, and of course, the cat that hides underneath the car across the street. You're all guilty of price manipulation, so I don't have to worry about even the possibility that maybe, just possibly, there might be something restraining the invisible hand. WIth insights like that, you could write for Powerline. Posted by: Matt at 10:45 AM on 18 November 2006I suspect Taco Bell has more immediate impact on gas than it does on, say, oil. Posted by: CGHill at 10:58 AM on 18 November 2006 |