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Pastimes : The Justa & Lars Honors Bob Brinker Investment Club -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Justa Werkenstiff who wrote (14465)	6/15/2000 6:55:00 AM
From: Justa Werkenstiff	Respond to of 15132

Natural Gas Rises as US Inventory Gain Seen Inadequate New York, June 14 (Bloomberg) -- Natural gas rose more than 2 percent on concern that U.S. inventories aren't rising fast enough to meet summer demand from utilities to power air conditioning while storing enough away for the winter. Inventories rose 78 billion cubic feet, or 5.8 percent, last week, the American Gas Association said in a report released today. The increase was below the average of 86 billion injected in the same week over the past five years. Supplies were down 23 percent from a year earlier. ``Growing demand doesn't let people inject as much as they used to,'' said David Chang, vice president of energy trading at Bank of America in New York. ``Why couldn't they inject more with no a/c load or heating load to speak of?'' Natural gas for July delivery rose 9.8 cents, or 2.4 percent, to $4.256 per million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange. On June 6, gas reached $4.575, the highest price since December 1996, when prices reached a record $4.60. Traders and analysts surveyed by Bloomberg expected the storage report to show stockpiles rose an average 65 billion cubic feet in the week ended June 9. Supplies rose 63 billion a year earlier. Last week was only the second time this year that inventories posted a bigger gain than in the same week last year. Natural gas futures could continue to rally if storage levels don't rise faster, traders said. At the present rate, stockpiles will fall short of the 3,000 billion cubic feet the industry tries to store away before winter each year. ``We are nowhere near out of the woods yet,'' said Aaron Kildow, an energy analyst at Prudential Securities in New York. Today we ``got back to basics and are trading on fundamentals.'' Air conditioners will be running more often next week in most of the Midwest and Northeast, as above-normal temperatures were predicted in the National Weather Service's six-to-10-day forecast, released just before the futures market closed. The weather could force utilities to increase the use of gas- fired power plants to produce enough electricity to meet the cooling demand. Inventories normally rise this time of year as utilities prepare for the cold-weather months, when demand peaks. Jun/14/2000 17:28 ET