Dow Jones Natural Gas - End of Day Commentary

DJ Natural Gas Rebounds on Cold Start to Spring

   By Timothy Puko

  Natural-gas prices inched up Tuesday after forecasts showed a colder-than-expected start for spring and suggested a
lingering demand for gas heat.

  Natural gas for April delivery settled up 5.3 cents, or 1.9%, at $2.786 a million British thermal units on the New
York Mercantile Exchange. The gains snapped a three-session losing streak and reversed losses from Monday's session.

  Snow and cold have traders thinking about lingering heating demand, brokers and analysts said. About half of all U.S.
homes use natural gas for heating fuel, making winter weather one of the biggest drivers of demand.

  "It's probably just enough to keep this market from really tanking again," said Frank Clements, co-owner of Meridian
Energy Brokers Inc. outside New York. "We're at a really good price level, maybe right where we should be."

  After a steep fall for the better part of seven months, natural-gas prices have stabilized. They have traded within a
34-cent range for seven weeks.

  Mr. Clements and several analysts think this boost will be only temporary. The natural-gas market is oversupplied by
about two billion cubic feet a day, which likely will cause prices to fall as heating demand declines this spring,
according to investment bank Simmons & Co. International.

  But that is weeks away, especially in the biggest gas markets of the Midwest and Northeast, meteorologists said
Tuesday. "Major cold shots" are coming through the northern Plains and into the East, with areas from St. Louis to
Maine likely to see temperatures about five degrees Fahrenheit below normal through the first week of April, they said.

  It will feel "more like the dead of winter than the last weekend of March," WeatherBELL Analytics LLC in New York
said in its Tuesday morning update.
   Write to Timothy Puko at tim.puko@wsj.com

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  (END) Dow Jones Newswires

  March 24, 2015 15:15 ET (19:15 GMT)

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032415 19:15 -- GMT
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