DJ Natural Gas Divided Between Oversupply and Speculators' Maneuvering
By Timothy Puko
Natural gas prices fell slightly Wednesday in seesaw trading divided between oversupply concerns and speculators
maneuvering around the June contract's expiration.
Prices for the front-month June contract lost 0.7 cent, or 0.2%, to $2.815 a million British thermal units on the New
York Mercantile Exchange. Gas has now fallen in six of the past seven sessions, closing Wednesday at a fresh two-week
low.
The June contract expired at close. The July contract was more actively traded, losing 0.2 cent, or 0.1%, to settled
at $2.847/mmBtu.
"It really has been a dead expiration (day)," said Kyle Cooper, managing director of research at IAF Advisors, a
Houston consulting firm.
Demand has tapered off, in part from the Memorial Day holiday and in part from nuclear power plants ramping up in
recent days taking back a larger share of the power market, Mr. Cooper and other analysts said. And natural gas is
still dealing with a near-record supply in a low-demand season, so prices are primed to fall.
Prices held up close to unchanged largely because many bears cashed out to lock in profits after the recent run of
losing sessions, analysts said. The market has been flooded with bearish traders and many were also likely buying back
June contracts to close out those bets in order to roll them over to July, Jim Ritterbusch, president of
energy-advisory firm Ritterbusch & Associates, said in a note.
Write to Timothy Puko at tim.puko@wsj.com
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 27, 2015 15:17 ET (19:17 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2015 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
052715 19:17 -- GMT
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