US natural gas futures fell for a third day on Thursday, easing 2.4 percent after an expected record-setting withdrawal from storage and forecasts for less heating demand over the next two weeks. The front-month natural gas futures contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange settled down 10.7 cents at $4.383 per million British thermal units.
The front-month contract traded from its high of $4.496 overnight to the low of $4.355, the lowest since late January, before ending higher, near the 100-day moving average. "Front-month prices are moving lower today as the NYMEX attempts to price in April market dynamics," said Aaron Calder, a senior market analyst with Gelber & Associates in Houston.
Meanwhile, cash prices for gas and power continued the week's roller-coaster ride, falling Thursday as cold weather loses its grip, at least temporarily, on the Northeast and Midwest. Utilities pulled 195 billion cubic feet of gas from storage last week, the biggest draw ever for the month of March, but in line with market expectations.
A record 2.833 trillion cubic feet of gas has been drawn from storage since the start of the heating season in November, leaving just 1.001 tcf in storage, the lowest storage level for this time of year since 2003. Gas consumers will need to inject an average of 13 bcf per day into storage over the summer to rebuild the inventory before the next heating season arrives, a gas industry spokesman said.
The latest US computer weather model showed slightly below-normal temperatures over the next 15 days and slightly colder weather than a weather model six hours earlier, according to Thomson Reuters Analytics. MDA Weather Services forecast strong warmth in the West over the next five days and the return of colder temperatures in the North over the next six to 15 days.
Power production in the continental United States increased 6.2 percent last week to 80,142 gigawatt-hours from a year earlier, according to data released on Wednesday by the Edison Electric Institute trade association. The April contract narrowed its premium to 2.8-cents above the May 2014 contract, down from a 4.9-cent premium a day earlier. Gas contracts for the balance of the year and the summer of 2014 both lost about 6 cents to $4.42 and $4.39 per mmBtu, respectively.
Comments
Comments are closed.