I, for one, would like to see some more fleshing out. While your comments partially explain some of the recent decline in NG prices, and that's the only point at issue, they don't explain all. I am surprised to see NG come so far back off its high of 15 or 13, whatever it was.

vtpeacenik,
there's quite a bit of natural gas storage in the US. The warm winters in the US over the last two years have meant the pipelines have had plenty of gas left in storage at the end of the last two winters, so the pipelines aren't purchasing more from producers and the producers are shutting in wells and slowing down drilling.

Most of the Barnett Shale was sold to investors with a orojected wellhead price of at least $7.00 per MCF, and those wells have rapid decline in prodution.Prices that are unstable make it difficult to raise money to drill .Bob Ebersole

USA NG consumption is running at a rate that looks like 23.6 TCF for 2007, same as 2003, but mix has changed a lot, with industrial down (fertilizer etc) and electricity generation up, and growing. USA production was down from the 2003 peak in 2004/5/6 but is about back to 2003 level this year. Drilling in ca June 2002 was 1100 wells/mo and in June 2007 was ca 2800 wells/mo, so 2&1/2x the drilling for the same production. Imports from Canada are down slightly this year, while LNG imports are up just about the same amount. Storage capacity now is very close to 3.6 Tcf, excluding line pack, up about 0.04 Tcf from last year. Storage just crossed 3.0 Tcf last week, and there are 8 to 10 weeks left in the injection period, with a mild fall being forecast. Gas available for storage is likely to exceed storage capacity by 100 to 400 Bcf before the end of the injection season, and that is why prices are (temporarily) down. If by late Sept the excess looks like 400 Bcf prices are likely to drop to the point where NG is temporarily substituted for coal for some electricity production, as a way to use the excess. I'm not sure what that price is, but it is probably near or below $4.00/kcf. As noted above a string of mild winters have balanced the situation nicely for NG, keeping prices from going real high. A "normal" winter this year will leave storage at the end of the withdrawal season low enough that it will not be possible to fully replenish storage during 2008. You can then expect NG prices in late Sept/early Oct 2008 >2x the same period in 2007, with the real possibility of a much higher spike. NG prices in early spring and fall are based much more on storage vs capacity than on supply vs demand. Murray

Amen. During the past few decades, the Detroit mantra has been "The more metal, the more margin."

Increase in weight may have been a factor in the early-to-late seventies when the first bumbling steps toward safety were taken, but in the intervening years, structural design innovations and new materials would have made it possible for Detroit to cut weight and maintain safety. You need only notice that we do have light cars on the road that meet safety ratings to see this.

However, Detroit found it much more profitable to sell massive amounts of metal to drag along under Bob Suburbia's ass, so they got to promoting that the vehicles were safer and more luxurious, with the unpublicized benefit of giving them more profits.

In reality, larger vehicles are not inherently that much safer than smaller vehicles, except when you increase the aggregate quantity of larger vehicles. Then, oddly enough, the probability that two vehicles with a significant weight differential increases and the safety of the small vehicle decreases, not because of anything inherent in the small vehicle, but because of systemic risk of collision with a vehicle of larger weight increases. So while Detroit has touting safety in the individual vehicle, systemically, it has been lowering safety by increasing the spread of vehicle weights. But it is more profitable, so all is well...