HOUSTON (Dow Jones)--Natural gas futures inched higher Tuesday with the prospect of colder weather, but were muted in their climb by anticipation U.S. supplies might hit record levels this month.
Natural gas for December delivery settled up 3.8 cents, or 1%, higher at $3.87 a million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Gas futures have struggled to trade above $4/MMBtu as U.S. inventory levels are expected to grow beyond the near-record 3.754 trillion cubic feet recorded in storage at the end of the last week. The all-time high, reached last November, is 3.837 trillion cubic feet.
Industry analysts are expecting that last week's was another higher-than-normal injection into domestic supply as producers show little sign of decreasing drilling. Executives with Houston gas producer Petrohawk Energy Corp. (HK), for example, said Tuesday that despite slumping prices and rising costs they planned to increase domestic drilling into 2011 to lock-in leases in gas-producing shale formations.
"The imbalance that we and others have created by continuing to grow in the negative price environment will not last forever," Chief Executive Floyd Wilson said. "We have accepted higher levels of overall spending today in order to protect future values in a time when we believe prices will be higher, costs will be lower and value will be recognized."
Kyle Cooper, director of research for IAF Advisors in Houston, said that there had been some anticipation that the low price of gas for November delivery, which settled at $3.292/MMBtu, might stimulate interest from bargain seeking buyers. But pipeline data has given little indication of that happening in the first two days of the month.
"From that you just have to roll back on weather driving the demand," Cooper said. "As long as we remain somewhere normal to above-normal in terms of temperatures, price rallies are going to be pretty limited."
The temperature outlook for November is erratic, said Matt Rogers, president of the private forecaster Commodity Weather Group. At the moment there is colder air over the central and eastern U.S., but temperatures should warm up significantly throughout the East in the month's second week before cooling again toward the end of the month, Rogers said.
"It's a lot of back-and-forth temperature variability but I believe if you put it into perspective November 2009 was very warm almost all the way through," Rogers said. "So this year, even though it's very volatile, looks like we will see year-on-year demand gains."