‘Collapse’ in December Weather-Driven Demand Sends Natural Gas Futures Plummeting

Bearish forecast trends over the weekend, lowering heating demand expectations for the first half of December, ushered in further heavy losses for natural gas futures in early trading Monday. 

Coming off a 45.7-cent swoon in Friday’s session, the January Nymex contract was down another 43.7 cents to $5.844/MMBtu at around 8:40 a.m. ET. February was off 42.5 cents to $5.744.

Weather models trended warmer over the weekend, including a “massive” decline of 23 heating degree days in the American model’s outlook, according to NatGasWeather.

Both models advertised a “quite bearish” pattern for this week through Dec. 15, showing “much warmer than normal temperatures covering the southern and eastern U.S. most days,” NatGasWeather said. 

The weekend weather data...