Release Date: Dec. 12, 2023| Forecast Completed: Dec. 7, 2023| Next Release Date: Jan. 9, 2024|Full Report |Text Only|All Tables|All Figures
- Natural gas prices. The Henry Hub spot price in our forecast averages close to $2.80 per million British thermal units this winter (November—March), down more than 60 cents from our November Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO). The downward revision reflects both a warmer-than-average start to the winter, which has reduced demand for space heating in the residential and commercial sectors, and high natural gas production. These two factors have increased natural gas storage inventories. We forecast U.S. natural gas inventories will end the winter 22% above the five-year average (2018–2022), with more than 2,000 billion cubic feet in storage.
- Crude oil prices. We forecast the Brent crude oil spot price will increase from an average of $78 per barrel (b) in December to an average of $84/b in the first half of 2024, partly driven by recently announced OPEC+ production cuts. Despite the announced cuts, we lowered our forecast for the Brent price in 2024. We expect the Brent spot price will average $83/b next year, down from our forecast of $93/b in last month’s STEO.
- U.S. petroleum and other liquids net exports. We expect net exports of U.S. crude oil and petroleum products to reach a record high of almost 2.0 million barrels per day (b/d) in 2024, up from around 1.8 million b/d this year and 1.2 million b/d in 2022. This growth is primarily driven by an increase in U.S. crude oil and hydrocarbon gas liquids production.
- Electricity generation. We expect that the 23 gigawatts (GW) in 2023 and 37 GW in 2024 of new solar capacity scheduled to come online will help U.S. solar generation grow by 15% in 2023 and by 39% in 2024. We expect solar and wind generation together in 2024 to overtake electric power generation from coal for the first year ever, exceeding coal by nearly 90 billion kilowatthours.
| Notable Forecast Changes | 2023 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|
The current STEO forecast was released December 12. | ||
| Henry Hub spot price (current forecast)(dollars per million British thermal units) | $2.56 | $2.79 |
| Previous forecast | $2.67 | $3.25 |
| Percentage change | -4.1% | -14.3% |
| Brent crude oil spot price (current forecast) (dollars per barrel) | $82 | $83 |
| Previous forecast | $84 | $93 |
| Percentage change | -1.9% | -11.4% |
| U.S. motor gasoline retail price (current forecast) (dollars per gallon) | $3.53 | $3.36 |
| Previous forecast | $3.55 | $3.61 |
| Percentage change | -0.8% | -6.8% |
| U.S. crude oil inventories (current forecast) (million barrels) | 435 | 439 |
| Previous forecast | 416 | 427 |
| Percentage change | 4.7% | 2.9% |
You can find more information in the detailed table of forecast changes.
| Overview | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 2022 | 2023projected | 2024projected | ||
| Brent crude oil (dollars per barrel) | 70.89 | 100.94 | 82.40 | 82.57 | |
| Gasoline retail price (dollars per gallon) | 3.02 | 3.97 | 3.53 | 3.36 | |
| U.S. crude oil production (million barrels per day) | 11.27 | 11.91 | 12.93 | 13.11 | |
| Natural gas spot price (dollars per million BTU) | 3.91 | 6.42 | 2.56 | 2.79 | |
| U.S. LNG exports (billion cubic feet per day) | 9.76 | 10.59 | 11.81 | 12.36 | |
| Shares of U.S. electricity generation (percentage) | |||||
| Natural gas | 37 | 39 | 42 | 42 | |
| Coal | 23 | 20 | 17 | 15 | |
| Renewables | 20 | 21 | 22 | 24 | |
| Nuclear | 20 | 19 | 19 | 19 | |
| U.S. GDP (percentage change) | 5.8 | 1.9 | 2.4 | 1.3 | |
| U.S. CO2 emissions (million metric tons) | 4,905 | 4,941 | 4,805 | 4,754 | |
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About the Short-Term Energy Outlook
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