Dow Jones - Natural Gas Down On Cooling Temperatures

DJ Natural Gas Falling as Weather Forecasts Cool


   By Timothy Puko


  NEW YORK--Natural-gas prices have given back about half of the prior
session's gains as updated weather forecasts pulled back on predictions of
warmer temperatures.

  Natural gas for September delivery is down 2 cents, or 0.5%, at $3.857 a
million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The price is
holding to the middle of a 23-cent trading range that gas has stayed in for the
past month.

  Several weather models are showing unseasonably cool weather spreading from
the North starting next week. Cool weather limits how much consumers use their
air conditioners-- and the gas-fired electricity that powers them. Temperatures
that had been expected to reach as high as 8-degrees-Farenheit above normal in
parts of the south are now getting pushed out as a cool front from Canada
sweeps through the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions.

  Increased demand from power plants has some analysts calling for gas to creep
above $4/mmBtu again. But that could be difficult without some kind of severe
weather--such as tropical storm hitting the production-rich Gulf of Mexico--or
other interruption to the record supply of gas coming from domestic drilling
boom, said Jim Ritterbusch, president of energy-advisory firm Ritterbusch &
Associates.

  "Unless we get some storms working their way into the (Gulf of Mexico) it's
going to be tough to get to a $4 handle again," he said.

  Physical gas for next-day delivery at the Henry Hub in Louisiana last traded
at $3.86/mmBtu, compared with Tuesday's range of $3.825-$3.885. Cash prices at
the Transco Z6 hub in New York traded in a bid-ask range of $2.40/mmBtu to
$2.58/mmBtu, compared with Tuesday's range of $2.53 to $2.63.


  Write to Timothy Puko at tim.puko@wsj.com
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  August 20, 2014 09:36 ET (13:36 GMT)

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082014 13:36 -- GMT
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