North American natural gas prices continued to be pressured to the upside this week amid sizzling temperatures and low storage inventories.

mini

The August New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex) contract went out meekly as prompt month on Wednesday after a nearly week-long rally. The August gas futures contract settled at $8.687/MMBtu, down 30.6 cents day/day. September then fell 42.0 cents day/day on Thursday to $8.134.

However, the momentum is firmly with the bulls with prices back to where they were in early June before an explosion at Freeport LNG in Texas left 2 Bcf/d of natural gas available to the market. The majority of U.S. locations moved back above $8.00 for August delivery, after having slumped below $6.00 for July baseload, NGI’s Bidweek Alert data showed.

“A...