DJ Natural Gas Prices Fall Despite Colder Weather Appearing in Forecasts
By Timothy Puko and Nicole Friedman
Natural gas prices fell on Wednesday, erasing early gains, despite colder weather creeping into forecasts, which
normally would be a positive sign for gas-heating demand that has been limited by a warm autumn.
Futures for January delivery recently traded down 1.4 cents, or 0.7%, to $2.056 a million British thermal units on
the New York Mercantile Exchange.
About half of U.S. homes use natural gas for heat, making winter weather the big driver for demand. Forecasts,
however, have shown widespread warmth across the country for weeks, sending prices to lows they haven't seen for
January futures since the late 1990s.
Colder weather has just started to appear in forecasts in recent days, primarily in the west. The entire Rockies
region is likely to see below-normal temperatures over the next two weeks, according to Commodity Weather Group LLC in
Bethesda, Md. On Tuesday, there were no below-normal temperatures in that forecast.
Prices have fallen so far that they are primed to bounce back at any optimistic sign for demand, analysts said. But
even so, "the weather data has yet to prove strong cooling will cover enough of the U.S. to expect bearish weather
sentiment to end," said NatGasWeather.com in a note.
Write to Timothy Puko at tim.puko@wsj.com and Nicole Friedman at nicole.friedman@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 09, 2015 12:58 ET (17:58 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2015 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
120915 17:58 -- GMT
------
No comments:
Post a Comment