Natural Gas Weekly Review: Price Movements Explained

Friday, March 13th saw the front-month NYMEX Natural Gas contract open at $3.161, $0.072 below Thursday’s closing price $3.233. Opting to look past this week’s impending cold snap, traders chose to focus on the seasonal temperatures that will cover much of the country in the coming weeks. Recording the intraday high of $3.183 at 9:15AM, prices arced lower through the morning until marking the intraday high again at 12:30PM. Stepping downward to mark the intraday low of $3.109 at 12:45PM, April closed lower on Friday at $3.131; down 1.7% on the week.

The EIA Natural Gas Storage Report published last Thursday posted a 38 BCF withdrawal from storage for the week ended March 6 – in line with the market estimate of a 37 BCF withdrawal. Total working gas in storage was reported as 1,848 BCF; 8.5% above this time last year and 0.9% below the five-year average.

As of 6:30AM this morning in Globex, WTI Crude was down $1.100; Natural Gas was down $0.037; Heating Oil was down $0.013; and Gasoline was up $0.015.

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