DJ Nymex Gas Rangebound Tue, Looks To Crude Data - Feb 1
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Natural gas futures closed unchanged Tuesday, not just
for the front month contract but for several back months.
Futures prices settled less than a penny higher or lower as traders said the
market was waiting for fresh data from meteorologists or from government
inventory reports. Mike Schick, president of natural gas consulting firm Energy
Analytics, said that the petroleum data due Wednesday may be particularly
influential.
"Tomorrow's oil statistics are the most important thing we have (coming up)
in the market, even more important than the gas inventory data," he said. "In
and of itself, the fundamentals of gas are very bearish, but we've got crude to
contend with."
Schick also noted that, notwithstanding the expected 200 Bcf plus withdrawal
from inventories expected in this week's gas storage report, predictions of
total gas storage falling to 1 Tcf by the end of the heating season were
"absurd."
"If we're extremely cold, we're not going to go below 1.2 Tcf - it's not
going to happen," he said.
March natural gas futures settled half a cent lower at $6.316 per million
British thermal units.
Physical gas prices rose and the benchmark Henry Hub saw late deals around
$6.23-$6.36/MMBtu versus $6.10-$6.30/MMBtu Monday. |
