Natural Gas Prices Up on Weather Forecasts

The Wall Street Journal reported that natural gas prices saw gains on Friday as bargain buyers and weather forecasts support prices.
As quoted in the press release:

Natural gas futures for October delivery recently rose 4.4 cents, or 1.5%, to $2.708 a million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Trading has been limited to a 6-cent range for the session, matching the docile pattern that has plagued gas futures all summer and kept prices in 33-cent range for nearly three months.
Summer prices are closely tied to heat because consumption usually rises as people turn on their air-conditioning units and ramp up demand for gas-powered electricity. Friday’s forecasts are continuing to show far-above average temperatures settling in next week, but also a patch of above-average temperatures that wasn’t expected this weekend for major cities including Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington.
Gas prices have fallen within about 20 cents of three-year lows in recent days, and, at that price, buyers will jump in hoping to pick a bottom ahead of an uptick in heat-related demand, Dominick Chirichella, analyst at the Energy Management Institute, said in a note. Others will see a hurricane headed for the country and simply decide to close out bearish, or short, bets on the outside chance the hurricane heads toward the Gulf of Mexico and threatens production and processing facilities in the region, said John Woods, president of JJ Woods Associates and a Nymex trader.

Click here to read the full Wall Street Journal report.