Analysts were predicting that the summer of 2014 would see the perfect storm, a collision of geopolitics and climactic conditions that would send energy prices through the roof.
Yet The Wall Street Journal is reporting that domestic energy prices are holding steady and even dropping, thanks in large measure to an increase in North American energy production.
A frigid winter had depleted natural-gas inventories, raising questions about whether producers could replace those stockpiles before temperatures drop again. Escalating violence in Iraq had some money managers worried that fighting would disrupt the country’s oil exports.
The steady rise of North American oil-and-gas production has diminished those threats, calming energy markets to a degree that investors and analysts say would have been hard to imagine even five years ago. U.S. gas producers are refilling storage at a record pace, including a bigger-than-expected increase to inventories in government data released Thursday. Iraqi oil shipments have continued unimpeded.
Read more HERE.