Sunday, September 30, 2007

Natural Gas



The trend line is a 6th order polynomial. Just keep in mind it is virtually worthless for predicting the future. 2005's spike in the trend was Katrina.

We have price stability! Wow, just look at it. It is amazing to witness. Well, from 1990 to 2000 anyway. What a nice flat red trend line that almost exactly matches the reported inflation rate. Nice. Very nice. Too bad we're not still living in that prosperous decade. This is the new millennium! So say goodbye to stability, enter volatility! At least we hope so, because the alternative might be hyperinflation.



This shows how much natural gas (as measured in millions of cubic feet) we "borrow" from other countries. We're really good at borrowing stuff in the hopes we pay others back in the future. Note that the chart would be even uglier if it was priced in US dollars, since the price of natural gas has been rising (and the dollar has been falling).

See Also:
Trend Line Disclaimer
Trade Deficit

Source Data:
EIA: Natural Gas
Consumer Price Indexes (CPI)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

the cwei board at investorvillage.com is very informative about oil and gas. I am in the camp that companies have cut back on drilling due to too much ng...and going into another major weather season could change that or not as has been seen the last several winters

Stagflationary Mark said...

I shudder to think what would happen to oil prices if we actually had a cold winter for a change.