The contract is down 22 per cent so far this week. “Inventories are above average and it’s going to warm up dramatically over the Christmas holiday weekend,” said Phil Flynn, senior analyst for Price Futures Group. “So now with these forecasts, which is flipping higher, everybody is jumping ship on natural gas.”
The decline occurred despite a federal report showing a bigger-than-expected storage withdrawal last week, when extreme cold boosted the amount of gas consumers burned to heat homes and businesses.
The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) on Thursday said energy firms pulled 177 billion cubic feet (bcf) of gas out of storage during the week ended December 5.