Supportive

The cash market saw a mix of gains and losses Thursday despite a supportive 22.5-cent increase in near-month natural gas futures the day before. Even with the additional 13.8-cent futures gain on Thursday, cash points nationwide on Friday still might not be able to follow.

Supportive crude prices, no update on the Independence Hub repairs and the first year-on-five-year average storage deficit in almost four years continued to push natural gas futures higher in Tuesday’s trade, but not high enough to break out of the recent trading range. After recording the day’s high of $10.280 in morning trade, May natural gas futures put in a low of $10.165 before closing out Tuesday’s regular session at $10.205, up 15.2 cents from Monday’s close.

The cash market had an abundance of supportive factors on which to base gains across the board Thursday: cold weather returning to northern market areas and continuing in the Rockies; developing cooling load from 80s highs in much of the South and Southwest; the previous day’s 35.9-cent spike by May futures; and Gulf Coast supply tightness as a result of the Independence Hub outage (see Daily GPI, April 10).

With near-term weather remaining supportive and speculative traders holding a record net short position, March natural gas futures continued to test higher price levels in Monday action. The contract recorded a $9.300 high in morning trade and a $9.090 low in the afternoon before settling at $9.186, up 4 pennies from Friday’s close.

On a day when Nymex traders set the record bar for crude oil futures substantially higher, a continuation of frigid weather in some areas and the strongly supportive 31.7-cent advance by March natural gas futures the day before caused a majority of points to continue their ascent Wednesday.

Except for the Rockies, most points saw little change in pricing Thursday, with small gains handily outnumbering small losses. A supportive 14.7-cent prior-day increase by November futures and a moderate amount of heating load in northern market areas competed with mild weather in most other regions, an ongoing lack of tropical storm activity and the knowledge that storage injection options are rapidly disappearing in vying for influence on price movement.

September natural gas futures drifted lower as formerly supportive fundamental weather factors started to lose some of their bullish luster Friday. The September contract fell 1.6 cents to settle at $6.090 and the October contract skidded 2.4 cents to $6.292. Floor traders noted a fundamentally soft tone to the market.

FERC Commissioner Philip Moeller said Tuesday he is generally supportive of opening access to new sources of natural gas and believes building energy infrastructure should be a national priority.

Bullish energy traders must have been celebrating their good fortune Thursday as they received supportive price news from the same man for the second time in a little more than a week. AccuWeather.com Chief Long-Range Forecaster Joe Bastardi and his team said Thursday that they expect this summer to be hotter than normal across a large part of the United States, including the most heavily populated areas of the Northeast.