NEW YORK: US natural gas futures slid about 2% on Monday to an 11-week low on rising output and reduced demand expectations over the next two weeks, due partly to a drop in liquefied natural gas exports from the shutdown of Freeport LNG’s Texas plant.

Analysts said the Freeport shutdown on June 8 should allow US utilities to quickly rebuild low gas stockpiles for next winter, but will reduce the amount of US gas available to the rest of the world.

That is a problem for Europe where most US LNG has gone as countries there wean themselves off Russian energy after Moscow’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine.

Freeport, the second-biggest US LNG export plant, consumes about 2 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) of gas, so a 90-day shutdown would make about 180 billion cubic feet (bcf) of additional gas available to the US market.

On its second to last day as the front month, gas futures for July delivery were down 14.8 cents, or 2.4%, at $6.072 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) at 9:33 a.m. EDT (1333 GMT), putting the contract on track for its lowest close since April 6 for a second day in a row.

That put the front-month down for a sixth day in a row for the first time since February and kept it in technically oversold territory, with a relative strength index (RSI) below 30 for a sixth day in a row for the first time since January 2020.

With futures down 30% over the past two weeks, gas speculators last week cut their net long futures and options positions on the New York Mercantile and Intercontinental Exchanges to their lowest since March 2020, when their positions were net short, according to the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Commitments of Traders report.