The past 18 months have taken a serious toll on normal supply and demand in many industries. But no industry was impacted more than energy…

Oil peaked at $147 per barrel in July 2008 — right before the house of cards came crashing down on the global economy. Once banks started to fail and credit dried up, other businesses slowed production and laid off workers. This created a massive trickle effect on the overall economy.

Big corporations and individual consumers alike were using less energy. That meant the prices of every energy-related commodity plummeted.

This spring, things started to turn around… The unemployment rate quit falling at such a rapid rate. Inventories were too low in many industries, creating a ramp up in production again. Energy prices climbed…

Since the start of this year, the price of crude oil has nearly doubled. In just the last six months, heating oil jumped as much as

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Evan Smith, co-manager of the Global Resources Fund (PSPFX), appeared on Bloomberg News today to discuss his outlook for natural gas with host Mark Crumpton. Evan explained what concerns are giving him pause. The commercial and industrial component of natural gas demand is still trending down roughly 12 percent year-on-year. Thatrsquo;s at a time when wersquo;ve had a pretty big response over the past year in reducing natural gas production. That being said wersquo;re 23 percent above where we were a year ago for storage levels. A lot of gas is in storage but wersquo;re coming up on the end of the storage season. I think very near term wersquo;re going to see some volatility, maybe lower gas prices but if you look past the next several weeks or maybe even month or so, Irsquo;m actually quite constructive on natural gas once we get beyond this weak period and things ...

blockquote/blockquoteI'm not going to cover the full details of the Halliburton quarter (earnings lower, but beat estimates...we know the deal), but it was interesting that the CEO went out of his way to speak about natural gas prices. (a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/OILPRD/idUSN2049810620090720"data via Reuters/a).br /br /blockquoteHalliburton Cospan style="cursor: pointer;" id="symbol_HAL.N_0"/span, the world's second-largest oilfield services company, posted a better-than-expected quarterly profit on Monday, boosting its shares, but it warned that North American natural gas markets were likely to stay weak through the end of the year.br /br /Natural gas prices in the United States have tumbled to less than half of year-ago levels, and high inventories were expected to curb spending by energy producers on new wells.br /br /"Due to the continued weakness in natural gas demand, reflected in the high injection rates for working gas storage, we believe it is unlikely that there will be a meaningful recovery in natural gas ...

After an unparalleled fall, natural gas prices could double by next year, as a growing number of idle rigs create a supply crunch.

Natural gas prices have tumbled by about 30% this year, as a steep drop in industrial consumption has undermined demand. However, many of the traders and hedge funds that placed speculative bets on the price decline are beginning to reverse course and bet on a price spike, as dwindling production is starting to outpace slumping demand.

Traders trimmed their net short positions on gas by 11% to 114,064 in the week ended March 10, the smallest since last July, Bloomberg News reported. Also, natural gas futures for delivery in January 2010 are trading at a 49% premium to the April contract, which means speculators are anticipating a price surge.

In its short-term energy outlook - released on March 10 - the Energy Information Administration said

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Recently, we discussed oil prices and their affect on the oil & gas industry with Zacks senior analyst Sheraz Mian. He helped give us some well-needed perspective, as well as his top picks within the space.

Oil prices have been steadily coming down in recent days – from the all-time high of around $147 to under $110 at present. Are we seeing the bursting of the oil bubble?

I wouldn’t call crude oil’s strength of the last few years as a bubble. While some ‘irrational exuberance’, to borrow a phrase from the former Fed Chief, could have been at work in oil’s doubling in price over the past year prior to its recent pullback, there are nevertheless sound fundamental reasons for the commodity’s historical strength.

The mismatch between the growth rates of supply and demand has been the driving force behind the current oil price cycle. The current pullback reflects

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