NEW YORK: US natural gas futures dropped about 5% to a fresh one-week low on Monday on record output, a drop in gas prices in Europe and forecasts for mild US weather through late October that will keep both heating and cooling demand low.
Front-month gas futures for November delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange fell 16.2 cents, or 5.0%, to $3.074 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) at 10:04 a.m. EDT (1404 GMT), putting the contract on track for its lowest close since Oct. 4.
That also put the contract down for a fourth day in a row for the first time since early September.
In Europe, gas prices at the Title Transfer Facility (TTF) benchmark in the Netherlands dropped about 12% to around $15 per mmBtu as high inventories and ample LNG flows ease supply concerns.
Even though the US front-month lost about 3% last week, speculators boosted their net long futures and options position on the New York Mercantile and Intercontinental Exchanges to the highest since May 2022, according to the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Commitments of Traders report.
The jump in net longs, however, came as a short squeeze last week boosted prices to an eight-month high, prompting speculators to close out 77,345 shorts, according to the CFTC report.
That was the third biggest weekly cut in shorts on record and the most since speculators sold an all-time weekly high of 121,934 shorts in March 2020. Total speculative shorts dropped last week to 145,669 contracts, the lowest since March 2021.
In the US Northeast, meanwhile, mild weather cut spot power prices for Monday in New England to $19 per megawatt hour, their lowest since November 2020. That compares with an average of $40 so far in 2023, $91 in 2022 and a five-year (2018-2022) average of $51.
LSEG said average gas output in the Lower 48 US states rose to an average of 103.4 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) so far in October, up from 102.6 bcfd in September and a record high of 103.1 bcfd in July.
“Natural gas output skyrocketed to new records over the weekend, and may continue to test higher over the next 30-45 days with Appalachian supply poised to rise seasonally,” analysts at energy consulting firm EBW Analytics said in a report.
Comments
Comments are closed.