Extreme cold that permeated much of the Lower 48 throughout the long Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday weekend and into the current trading week at once sent natural gas demand soaring and froze wells, causing steep cuts to production that carried into Tuesday.

Temperatures over parts of the Mountain West, Plains and Midwest plunged to around 50 below zero when accounting for wind chills over the weekend. Conditions remained frigid Tuesday.  

Ahead of that, natural gas cash prices ballooned last Friday, when NGI’s Spot Gas National Avg. spiked $13.450 to $16.770 and reached the highest level since 2021. That year, Winter Storm Elliott ushered in brutal winter conditions to Texas that forced deadly power outages and contributed to a massive...