DJ Natural Gas Falls to One-Month Low on Growing Production and Surpluses
By Timothy Puko
Natural gas prices fell to a one-month low Wednesday as traders responded to increasing production and the
expectation for growing weekly surpluses.
Prices for the front-month July contract lost 6.4 cents, or 2.4%, to $2.634 a million British thermal units on the
New York Mercantile Exchange. The move erased all of a small two-day rally and sent gas to its lowest settlement since
April 29.
The market's default position is to sell because of chronic oversupply, said Michael Doyle, a broker at Eclipse
International Inc. in New York. Production is still at a near-record pace and hot weather isn't coming to ramp up
demand for gas-fired power to run air conditioners, said Jim Ritterbusch, president of energy-advisory firm Ritterbusch
& Associates, said in a note.
Gains "were just overcooked yesterday," he added. "We didn't see enough shift in the temperature views to justify"
prices near $2.70/mmBtu.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration late Tuesday revised recently released first-quarter data that had shown
falling production so that it now shows slightly rising production. EIA data showed production hit 73.5 billion cubic
feet a day in the first quarter, a record and a 0.3% increase from the fourth quarter of 2014.
Strong production had oversupplied the market by 3 bcf a day two weeks ago, according to analysts. And many expect
that to continue. Last week's addition to storage may have hit 123 bcf, according to the median average of 19
forecasters surveyed by The Wall Street Journal. That would be among the five largest weekly surpluses in EIA data that
goes back through 1994.
EIA releases its weekly storage updates on Thursday at 10:30 a.m.
All the indicators of oversupply reinforce the inclination to sell that has dominated the natural-gas market for
nearly a year now, Mr. Doyle said. Gas prices have fallen in nine of the past 12 sessions.
"It's always been in bearish mode," he said. "You're always going to get rips to the upside, and it's just another
chance to sell."
Write to Timothy Puko at tim.puko@wsj.com
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 03, 2015 15:02 ET (19:02 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2015 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
060315 19:02 -- GMT
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