EIA Storage Announcements, Analyst Storage Forecasts, and Energy Prices

Abstract

Exploring properties both of the EIA’s natural gas and crude oil storage announcements and of analyst forecasts of the EIA storage figures, we find that analyst storage forecasts bring additional information to the market beyond seasonal patterns and past storage flows and that the market promptly incorporates analyst forecasts into oil and gas prices prior to the EIA announcements. Analyst’s natural gas forecasts efficiently impound the available time-series information but crude oil forecasts do not. We further find that the price reaction to subsequent EIA natural gas storage announcements is contingent on the level of analyst forecast uncertainty as proxied by analyst forecast disagreement. Storage flows higher or lower than analysts had expected one week tend to be partially reversed the following week and analyst forecast dispersion regarding future forecasts increases following large forecast errors.

Keywords: Energy Market, Storage Forecasts, EIA Storage Reports

JEL Classification: Q47, G10, G1