An update on the biggest story no one is talking about (at least in the US)
Through Dec 19, only 59% of European natural gas storages are filled. The labels show the % of storage filled at similar points in past years is closer to 77% on average.
59% is a 10-year low.
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As the chart below shows, the flow of gas from Russia to Europe is down considerably.
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In the last several days flows have essentially hit zero.
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With winter and cold weather coming, the price of natural gas is up more than 10x in the last year.
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And since natural gas is used in power generation, electricity prices are also soaring. Up 8x in a year, doubled in a few weeks.
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Thoughts on market reaction to the Venezuela news.
tl:dr
The spigot in Venezuela waiting to be opened to flood the world with crude oil and lower its price has been broken for a while.
It will take several years to fix it.
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Venezuela is a founding member of OPEC their official statistics show its production (blue) is down 71% from its 1998 peak.
Its sustainable capacity (max output in within 90 days and held for a year) is 1M barrels/day (orange).
Venezuela is at its maximum now.
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Why the big production decline?
Socialist Hugo Chávez was elected in December 1998. He turned out to be a brutal dictator. Only to be replaced by an even more brutal dictator, Nicolás Maduro, when Chávez died in March 2013.
It is correct that the new home premium (green) above existing home prices (blue) has collapsed from 38% in 2013 to below zero today (the lowest in 54 years).
Why?
See new home prices (orange), they stalled.
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Here is the average home price (orange) and the home's size (blue). The reason prices are falling is that builders are constructing smaller homes.
But as the bottom panel shows (green), the price per square foot is as high as ever.