While many expected natural gas futures to sink a little bit early this week following the June contract’s 68-cent plunge last week, the prompt month reversed course Monday with the support of the petroleum futures complex.

After reaching an overnight low in the Nymex Access trading session of $6.471, June natural gas hovered around $6.60 for a majority of Monday’s session before jumping higher. After recording the day’s high late in the session at $6.73, the prompt month settled at $6.697, up 11.2 cents from Friday’s close.

Some analysts continued to point to the symbiotic relationship between crude and heating oil futures. On the day, June crude and heating oil gained $1.20 and 3.73 cents, respectively, to settle at $50.92/bbl and $1.4632/gallon.

IFR Energy Services’ Tim Evans said recent data shows that natural gas futures could be eyeing a rebound. “The natural gas market is turning higher off a new low with some optimism returning now that the crude oil market appears to have stabilized,” he said. “Weather data may lend some support as well. Heating degree day accumulations for last week were higher than originally forecast, so we’re revising our estimate for Thursday’s DOE [storage] report to a 30-40 Bcf refill,” which would likely be supportive to the market.

“June natural gas has a chance to turn higher here, both off the declining channel support shown here on the June chart and also the weekly uptrend line on the spot continuation chart now rising through $6.515,” Evans said. “While prices did violate both these levels in the Access session, the open outcry low of $6.545 tells a somewhat more supportive story.”

The analyst noted that a rebound through Friday’s $6.809 high would turn the rally opportunity into something more substantial, taking aim at the failed support at $6.98 and the downtrend resistance at $7.24.

Showing how quickly the market winds can change, market experts ahead of trading Monday said the natural gas futures market would be hard-pressed to avoid the petroleum market “steam roller” and the weak technical environment.

During shoulder month periods, natural gas prices have little in the way of market-moving weather and electrical generation demand to influence prices, and recently the trend has been to closely follow movements in petroleum prices. Noting that they expected crude futures to continue lower, a group of analysts said that if that trend continued, natural gas prices could fall further. According to a Bloomberg survey, 32 of 55 analysts and strategists, or 58%, predicted oil prices would fall this week, the most bearish result since November. Twelve, or 22%, said they will rise, and 11 respondents forecasted little change.

Much of the expected decline in crude futures prices is the result of bulging inventories. U.S. crude-oil stockpiles rose in 10 of the last 11 weeks, and supplies are 5.4% higher than the five-year average for the week. U.S. crude oil inventories rose to 324.4 million bbl on April 22, the highest since May 2002, according to figures from the Department of Energy. Imports in the week ended April 22 surged 12% to an average 10.9 million b/d, the highest this year, in large part due to expanding output from OPEC.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Commitments of Traders Report released Friday showed noncommercials holding a net short position of 8,362 natural gas contracts (futures only). Curiously, this was a decrease from a net short position of 13,766 reported as of April 19. However, the figure of 8,362 net short does not include what may have been large position changes after April 26. The June futures contract declined a titanic 37.2 cents on April 27 and registered subsequent declines of 5.3 cents and 16.3 cents on April 28 and April 29, respectively.

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