The Energy And Market Page, Part 2, T+290 -- November 7, 2017

EIA's short-term energy outlook released:

Oil Markets:

• Brent crude oil prices averaged almost $58 per barrel in October, the highest monthly average since June 2015, as global oil stock have fallen by an estimated 400,000 barrels per day over the past six months. 
• EIA expects Brent prices to average $56 per barrel next year.
• Despite lower production in of the Gulf of Mexico during October, mainly attributed to Hurricane Nate, total U.S. crude oil production averaged 9.3 million barrels per day for the month. Our forecast continues to expect overall U.S. production to average 9.9 million barrels per day for all of 2018.

Gasoline/Refined Products:

• U.S. regular gasoline retail prices averaged $2.51 per gallon in October.
• That price was down 14 cents per gallon compared with September, and we expect prices to continue trending down in a typical seasonal pattern through the end of 2017.
• Consumers could expect to see retail regular gasoline prices average $2.45 per gallon in 2018, just above the expected average retail price per gallon of $2.40 for all of 2017.

Natural Gas:

• We foresee a likely rebound in average household residential consumption of natural gas this winter, as we expect temperatures to be closer to average and therefore colder than last year.
• Following last year’s very warm winter, consumption could climb by 8% this winter.

Electricity:

• The share of utility-scale electricity generation for natural gas and coal continues to be evenly split at about 31% for each fuel source in 2017. 
• For natural gas, that’s down three percentage points from 2016, resulting largely from a combination of higher prices coupled with increased coal and renewables generation.

Coal:

• EIA revised its projections for coal exports up this month. We now expect to see U.S. coal exports to climb by about 37% from 2016 to 2017, as coal production continues to grow.

Renewables:

• The data indicate that conventional hydroelectricity in the United States will increase by roughly 13% in 2017 compared to 2016 because of heavy snow in the West last winter. At this time, we project hydroelectric generation will return in 2018 to levels closer to those seen in 2016.

*************************************

Cold front: Unfortunately I don't have the full graph, but it's enough for me. It appears the blue (cold) covers a much, much wider area than the red (warm). Don tells me it was 2 degrees below zero in Hettinger, ND, overnight.

This comes via Twitter:

SRE: on a day the market is down, SRE is up over a percent, hitting a new 52-week high. I assume it is because of these forecasts for a colder winter. SRE pays 2.77% even at this high share price. As late as December, 2013, SRE paid a quarterly dividend of 63 cents; it now pays a dividend of 82.3 cents per share and likely to raise that dividend in March, 2018.

Disclaimer: standard disclaimer in effect.