US natural gas futures rose for a fourth day in a row, gaining about two cents on Wednesday on cooler weather forecasts as the market waited for a government report expected to show another bigger-than-normal storage build on Thursday. That was the longest streak of gains since early June.
Front-month gas futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange closed up 1.8 cents, or 0.5 percent, at $4.013 per million British thermal units. The front-month contract is up 4 percent so far this week but is still down 1 percent for the month and off 5 percent for the year. Analysts forecast utilities added 90 billion cubic feet of gas into storage last week, just below a 92-bcf build in the prior week, but topping builds of 48 bcf a year earlier and a five-year average of 71 bcf.