Prompt

A 7.1-cent drop by prompt-month futures a day earlier and the usual negative impact of industrial load loss over a weekend were outweighed by forecasts of continued near-freezing lows in much of North America in rallying most of the cash market to moderate gains Friday.

With most market participants having finished their December natural gas futures business by last week, the prompt-month contract had a mostly uneventful ride into expiration on Tuesday. December natural gas traded between $4.361 and $4.610 on low volume before going off the board at $4.486, up 1.3 cents from Monday’s finish. The January contract closed the day at $4.766, down 2.5 cents.

After recording consecutive new lows on Wednesday and Thursday, the December natural gas futures contract on Friday halted the streak and pushed higher. The prompt-month contract — which terminates on Tuesday — recorded a high of $4.442 before closing Friday’s regular session at $4.424, up 8.2 cents from Thursday’s finish and 3.2 cents north of the previous week’s close.

The previous day’s gain of 9.8 cents by prompt-month futures must have done most of the heavy lifting in propelling all but one cash point higher Wednesday because besides some moderate temperature declines forecast for Thursday in parts of the Northeast, Midwest and Pacific Northwest, there were few additions to heating load to be found.

With some additions to heating load in the East being arrayed against a Rockies warming trend and a significant drop by prompt-month futures a day earlier, the result was little price movement up or down at eastern locations Tuesday along with fairly large declines at a majority of western points.

October natural gas futures on Friday picked up where the expiring September contract left off on Thursday as the new prompt-month contract spiraled lower to close the week’s final regular session at $3.033, down 17.3 cents from Thursday’s finish.

While Thursday’s news of a 52 Bcf addition to natural gas storage inventories for the week ending Aug. 14 was bullish compared to most expectations and historical comparisons for the week, prompt-month natural gas futures, in response to the report, dipped below $3 for the first time in seven years before closing out the day at $2.945, down 17.4 cents from Wednesday’s finish.

The lowest cash and prompt-month futures natural gas prices of the year are likely still to come as gas storage remains on track to reach record levels by the end of injection season despite a recent tapering of injections, analysts at Barclays Capital warned in a note last week.

With a little extra push from the previous day’s prompt-month futures decline of 6.9 cents, the cash market finally acknowledged Wednesday that based on generally subpar cooling load in many areas, its moderate strength in the first two days of the week had largely been defying the law of price gravity.