Biggest One-Day Drop in Nat Gas Since 2009 – CNBC Blog
Posted By RichC on August 3, 2012
After a relatively positive summer for natural gas bulls, the sudden move down in the last couple days has been painful for those being long. Most still see the switch to NG from coal to be positive in the long run and still a place to make money. I would expecting more pressure in the short term IF the high temperatures we’ve seen recently come back to normal in August, but I still see demand (and supplies) increasing in the long run. (Hmm, distribution companies like Kinder Morgan (KMP) stand to gain perhaps?)
Natural gas futures plunged 8 percent Thursday as supplies grew more than expected last week and as hot temperatures were forecast to moderate by the middle of August.
This was the biggest one-day percentage decline for a front-month natural gas contract since September 17, 2009.
September natural gas futures closed down over 20 cents at $2.92 per million BTUS, settling below $3 for the first time in two weeks. Natural gas futures had topped $3.17 earlier in the session and hit a 7-month high of $3.21 on Tuesday.
Natural gas suffered steep losses after the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported storage levels rose by 28 billion cubic feet last week. Platts survey of analysts had predicted storage levels would rise by 20 to 24 billion cubic feet on average. The weekly supply increase was still less than the injection to storage at this time last year, and was also below the five-year average.
Comments