Finish

The bears made it a clean sweep for the week on Friday as July natural gas futures dropped an additional 21.8 cents to finish at $7.130. The cumulative result of the five consecutive lower closes was a 78.8-cent drop from the previous Friday.

Maintaining Monday’s downward price momentum, May natural gas futures on Tuesday shed another 11.2 cents to finish the regular session at $7.418. More impressively, the contract’s trading range on the day seemed to point towards the possibility that the week’s 38.3-cent drop through Tuesday might be added to on Wednesday.

April natural gas futures rallied 19.1 cents Wednesday to finish at $7.083 as some end-users decided the $6.900 level was a prime place to cash in their chips and buy gas. While the prompt month settled higher for the first time in six regular sessions and above $7 for the first time in three, some market experts weren’t ready to bring their bull costumes out of the closet just yet, even with the expectations that a significant storage withdrawal would be revealed Thursday.

Assuming normal weather for the remainder of winter, working gas in storage is expected to finish out the 2006-2007 heating season at the highest level since 1991, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in its Short-Term Energy Outlook for February. However, the agency’s projections apparently did not reflect the severe cold snap and large storage withdrawals of the last two weeks.

Assuming normal weather for the remainder of winter, working gas in storage is expected to finish out the 2006-2007 heating season at the highest level since 1991, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in its Short-Term Energy Outlook for February.

Near-month natural gas futures backtracked 7.3 cents Wednesday to $7.667, but the wimpy finish revealed little about the rodeo ride that took place during the trading day. The contract bounced all over the charts, dipping to a low of $7.50 after the opening bell, suddenly jumping up to a high of $7.960 about two hours later and then collapsing back below $7.60.

The key Alberta link in Canada’s Mackenzie Valley gas pipeline project faces a fight to the finish, with a resistant aboriginal community straddling the entrance to the North American natural gas grid.

After hitting its head on a high of $7.630 to begin the week on Monday, May natural gas explored the lower boundaries of its recent range to finish the week Friday. After recording a low of $6.670, the prompt month settled at $6.743, down 22.9 cents on the day and 46.7 cents lower for the week.

The president of ExxonMobil Corp. said Canada’s C$7 billion ($5.9 billion) Mackenzie Valley natural gas pipeline will “ultimately get across the finish line,” likely before the rival gas line in Alaska. The gas line, as proposed, would carry about 1.9 Bcf/d of gas to Alberta pipelines, which then would be routed to Canadian and U.S. markets.