NEW YORK: US natural gas futures slid about 2% to a one-week low on Monday on expectations Hurricane Milton will cut the amount of gas power generators need to burn later this week by knocking out electricity service to potentially millions of homes and businesses in Florida.

The US National Hurricane Center projected Milton will slam into the west coast of Florida as a major storm late on Wednesday before sweeping across the central part of the state on Thursday.

Those Florida outages will add to the almost 300,000 homes and businesses still without power in the Carolinas and Georgia since Hurricane Helene moved inland after slamming into Florida on Sept. 26.

Front-month gas futures for November delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange fell 6.5 cents, or 2.3%, to $2.789 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) at 9:26 a.m. EDT (1326 GMT), putting the contract on track for its lowest close since Sept. 26.

But with gas futures up in five of the past six weeks, speculators boosted their net long futures and options positions on the New York Mercantile and Intercontinental Exchanges for a fifth week in a row to their highest since June, according to the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Commitments of Traders report.

One factor that has supported prices in recent weeks, the front-month has gained about 41% over the past six weeks, was a drop in the amount of fuel utilities have injected into storage for the 2024-2025 winter heating season.