Brian Kessens looks at summer heat and sees a calendar. On Fox Business’s The Claman Countdown on June 29, the Tortoise Capital senior portfolio manager walked through the natural gas market ahead of an anticipated hot summer, with air conditioning load doing most of the pushing. Fox titled the clip “People don’t realize price for natural gas is driven by ‘seasonality’” and the numbers behind his framing come straight from the government’s own spreadsheets.
Kessens flagged three names he said are positioned for stronger gas prices and global demand: Cheniere Energy, Targa Resources and EQT Corp. He also argued gas prices have tended toward more stability than crude oil. The stock picks are his. The seasonality case is shared.
Drawing on its May Short-Term Energy Outlook, the Energy Information Administration put power-sector gas consumption, in an in-brief analysis published May 28, at 43.7 billion cubic feet per day for June through September, even with last summer and 4% above the average of the past five summers. Overall U.S. electricity demand should rise 2% this summer, with gas-fired generation held near last year’s mark mainly because renewables are supplying more of it. The agency noted: “Electricity consumption is highest during the summer months because of cooling needs across all sectors.”
The record waits a year
The bigger signal sits in 2027. The EIA expects power burn to climb 6%, or 2.4 Bcf/d, in summer 2027 and reach 46.1 Bcf/d, clearing the record set in 2024 by 3%. Air conditioning is only part of what is stacking up: new data centers and large manufacturing plants, above all in Texas and Virginia, are adding commercial demand on top of the seasonal peak. The agency wrote: “These facilities require large amounts of electricity for both operation and cooling.”
Grid operators feel the load first. ERCOT, which manages most of the Texas grid, is expected to raise gas generation 22% between the summers of 2025 and 2027, while PJM in the Mid-Atlantic adds another 6%, with computing facilities leading the commercial growth there. Renewables climb alongside rather than instead: the EIA puts them at 25% of generation in 2027 against 21% in 2025, a continuation of a decade-long national shift away from coal.
The calculus, on the trading desk and in the federal forecast alike, runs the same way: heat arrives on schedule, cooling load follows and gas answers. The record is not forecast to fall this summer. Next summer, on the current numbers, it does.
Sources
- People don't realize price for natural gas is driven by 'seasonality': Brian Kessens | Fox Business Video
- Natural gas for power generation flat this summer, record high expected in 2027 – U.S. Energy Information Administration, Today in Energy (in-brief analysis)
