Natural gas futures continued higher in early trading Wednesday as analysts pointed to data showing lagging production and recovering export volumes. The July Nymex contract was up 5.7 cents to $3.315/MMBtu at around 8:50 a.m. ET.

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Heading into Wednesday’s session there was “very little change” in the temperature outlook compared to 24 hours prior, according to Bespoke Weather Services.

The overall theme from the modeling has been “a hotter than normal base state, but being driven more by strong heat in the western half of the nation, with variability elsewhere,” Bespoke said. “We have seen some model runs show potential for more eastern heat in the back of the 11- to 15-day period, but so far that part has not progressed forward. We suspect there will be spikes of...