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Forumer storico
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Natural gas futures reversed their earlier gains Thursday, falling after a report of a smaller-than-average weekly draw from U.S. inventories.
Natural gas for April delivery recently traded lower by 3.1 cents, or 0.7%, at $4.304 a million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract traded at about $4.367/MMBtu before the report.
The Energy Information Administration said U.S. gas stockpiles fell by 6 billion cubic feet last week, near consensus estimates in a Dow Jones Newswires survey for a 5-bcf draw.
The draw was smaller than the five-year average draw of 17 bcf. Last year 7 bcf was injected into storage.
Inventories as of March 18 stood at 1.612 trillion cubic feet, 2.2% above the five-year average and 0.7% below 2010 levels.
Traders said market participants had likely positioned themselves conservatively ahead of Thursday's report after last week's report of a surprisingly large draw caught traders off guard and sparked a rally of more than 5%.
"We've got a little bit of a pullback," said Phil Flynn, a broker and analyst with PFGBest in Chicago. The storage figure "was a bit bearish in meeting expectations," he said.
Flynn added that futures were also likely under pressure as traders took the opportunity to cash out to profit from the market's recent gains.
Gas had ended higher for the last two sessions on the view that cold weather across the northern tier of the U.S. would lift demand for the heating fuel and could lead to a late-season withdrawal from stockpiles.
Forecasters Thursday continued to see colder-than-normal temperatures across much of the Northeast and upper Midwest through next week. Meteorologists with private forecaster Commodity Weather Group expect much-colder-than-normal temperatures to stretch from New England to Minneapolis and Iowa through this weekend.
The cold weather, combined with questions about the viability of nuclear power in the wake of the Japanese crisis, has helped to wake the U.S. gas market from its recent slumber. Benchmark gas futures spent much of February and early March trading in a narrow range, with market participants reluctant to be that prices would fall from what were already unusually low levels, and spring's coming dip in demand capping gains.
Natural gas for April delivery recently traded lower by 3.1 cents, or 0.7%, at $4.304 a million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract traded at about $4.367/MMBtu before the report.
The Energy Information Administration said U.S. gas stockpiles fell by 6 billion cubic feet last week, near consensus estimates in a Dow Jones Newswires survey for a 5-bcf draw.
The draw was smaller than the five-year average draw of 17 bcf. Last year 7 bcf was injected into storage.
Inventories as of March 18 stood at 1.612 trillion cubic feet, 2.2% above the five-year average and 0.7% below 2010 levels.
Traders said market participants had likely positioned themselves conservatively ahead of Thursday's report after last week's report of a surprisingly large draw caught traders off guard and sparked a rally of more than 5%.
"We've got a little bit of a pullback," said Phil Flynn, a broker and analyst with PFGBest in Chicago. The storage figure "was a bit bearish in meeting expectations," he said.
Flynn added that futures were also likely under pressure as traders took the opportunity to cash out to profit from the market's recent gains.
Gas had ended higher for the last two sessions on the view that cold weather across the northern tier of the U.S. would lift demand for the heating fuel and could lead to a late-season withdrawal from stockpiles.
Forecasters Thursday continued to see colder-than-normal temperatures across much of the Northeast and upper Midwest through next week. Meteorologists with private forecaster Commodity Weather Group expect much-colder-than-normal temperatures to stretch from New England to Minneapolis and Iowa through this weekend.
The cold weather, combined with questions about the viability of nuclear power in the wake of the Japanese crisis, has helped to wake the U.S. gas market from its recent slumber. Benchmark gas futures spent much of February and early March trading in a narrow range, with market participants reluctant to be that prices would fall from what were already unusually low levels, and spring's coming dip in demand capping gains.
