NEW YORK: US natural gas futures slid about 2% on Friday on forecasts for mild weather to continue through mid-November, keeping heating demand lower than usual for this time of year and allowing utilities to add more gas into storage for at least a few more weeks.
Front-month gas futures for December delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) were down 4.4 cents, or 1.6%, to settle at $2.663 per million British thermal units (mmBtu).
Despite Friday’s price decline, the front-month was still up about 4% this week after climbing 13% last week.
Open interest in NYMEX futures, meanwhile, rose to a record 1.736 million contracts on Oct. 30, topping the prior all-time high of 1.700 million contracts in October 2018.
Analysts projected utilities added more gas to storage than usual this week for a third week in a row for the first time since October 2023, which should boost inventories to around 6% over the five-year average for the time of year. Prior to the past few weeks, storage injections through mid-October had been smaller than usual for 14 consecutive weeks because many producers reduced drilling activities this year after average spot monthly prices at the US Henry Hub benchmark in Louisiana fell to a 32-year low in March. Prices have remained relatively low since then.
In the spot market, pipeline constraints caused next-day gas prices at the Waha hub in the Permian Shale in West Texas to remain in negative territory for a record 42nd time this year. Even though prices were negative six times in October, analysts have said they expect prices to mostly remain in positive territory now that the new Matterhorn gas pipe from the Permian to the Houston area is in service.
Financial firm LSEG said average gas output in the Lower 48 US states eased to 101.3 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) in October, down from 101.4 bcfd in September. That compared with a record 105.4 bcfd in December 2023.
On a daily basis, however, output was on track to drop by about 3.1 bcfd over the past four days to a preliminary four-month low of 99.8 bcfd on Friday. Analysts noted preliminary data was often revised later in the day. With so many firms curtailing drilling activities, analysts projected average output in calendar 2024 will decline for the first time since 2020 when the COVID pandemic cut demand for the fuel. Looking ahead, however, analysts projected producers would boost output later this year and in 2025 to meet rising liquefied natural gas (LNG) export demand with two new export plants - Venture Global LNG’s Plaquemines in Louisiana and Cheniere Energy’s Corpus Christi stage 3 expansion in Texas - expected to start producing LNG later this year.
Meteorologists projected the weather in the Lower 48 states would remain warmer than normal through at least Nov. 16. But even warmer-than-normal weather in early November is cooler than warmer-than-normal weather in late October.
With seasonally cooler weather coming, LSEG forecast average gas demand in the Lower 48, including exports, would rise from 99.1 bcfd this week to 100.4 bcfd next week and 104.8 bcfd in two weeks. The forecasts for this week and next were lower than LSEG’s outlook on Thursday.
The amount of gas flowing to the seven big US LNG export plants rose to an average of 13.1 bcfd in October, up from 12.7 bcfd in September.