DJ Natural Gas in a Steady Retreat on Concerns About Bear Market
By Timothy Puko
Natural gas is in a steady retreat Thursday as concerns about a long-term bear market are pushing traders back into a
selloff.
Natural gas for February delivery is down 7 cents, or 2.4%, at $2.904 a million British thermal units on the New York
Mercantile Exchange. Trading volumes are light, but analysts said that will probably change and volatility is likely to
pick back up after the federal government's weekly storage update, scheduled for 10:30 a.m.
Stockpiles likely fell by 227 billion cubic feet of gas during the week ended Jan. 16, according to the average
forecast of 19 analysts and traders surveyed by The Wall Street Journal. That would be among the 20 largest draws on
storage in EIA records dating back to 1994.
But many traders have been looking past that and have focused on the chance that record supply could lead to a glut
later this year. Macquarie Group Ltd. had said Tuesday that the country could have 4.7 trillion cubic feet of gas
available for storage by October, 600 billion cubic feet more than the country's storage system has the capacity to
hold.
"It's pretty clear that we have enough gas around," said Michael Doyle, a broker at Eclipse International Inc. in New
York. "You still have guys who are trying to sell anything they can ... anything eight months out."
Physical gas for next-day delivery at the Henry Hub in Louisiana last traded at $2.915/mmBtu, compared with
Wednesday's range of $2.91-$2.965. Cash prices at the Transco Z6 in New York traded in a bid-ask range of $3.20/mmBtu
to $3.45/mmBtu, compared with Wednesday's range of $3.18 to $3.30.
Write to Timothy Puko at tim.puko@wsj.com
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 22, 2015 09:49 ET (14:49 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2015 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
012215 14:49 -- GMT
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