NEW YORK: US natural gas futures slid about 2 percent on Thursday on a bigger-than-expected storage build last week that keeps the amount of gas in inventory well above normal for this time of year.
Front-month gas futures for November delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange fell 7.8 cents, or 2.3 percent, to USD3.372 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) at 10:36 a.m. EDT (1436 GMT). That price decline came despite forecasts for more demand over the next two weeks than previously expected, a fall in output so far this month and near-record flows of gas to liquefied natural gas (LNG) export plants.
The US Energy Inform-ation Administration said energy firms injected 87 billion cubic feet (bcf) of gas into storage during the week ended October 17. That was bigger than the 81-bcf build analysts forecast in a Reuters poll and compared with an increase of 79 bcf during the same week last year and an average build of 77 bcf over the past five years.