Natural Gas Futures Fall Even Further as Weather Models Weaken Mid-February Cold

Updated forecasts weakened heating demand expectations associated with an arriving mid-February pattern shift, and natural gas futures, already trading at a discount, continued to drop in early trading Friday.

Coming off a 5.0-cent decline in the previous session, the March Nymex contract was off another 4.9 cents to $1.868/MMBtu at around 8:45 a.m. ET.

Both the American and European datasets shed heating degree days (HDD) from the outlook overnight, with the European model down 17 HDD over the prior 24 hours, according to NatGasWeather.

The American model advertised “only modest amounts of subfreezing air” for the Lower 48 for late next week through Feb. 22, while the European dataset “still shows greater coverage of frosty air” and above normal HDD totals for this...