Wintry Weather Lifts Natural-Gas Prices – The Wall Street Journal

The winter storm blanketing the Northeast and forecasts for a frigid February are boosting natural-gas prices.

Natural-gas futures rose 11.1% to close at $2.85 per million British thermal units on Monday. That is 57% higher than a year ago, when the weather was uncommonly warm, yet still about 15% below the price to start this heating season.

“An unusually strong response to weekend adjustments to the short-term temperature forecasts,” said Ritterbusch and Associates. The trading firm said prices could approach $3 this month if the weather outlook materializes.

Furnaces are firing in the Northeast, where snow started piling up over the weekend. But in much of the country temperatures will remain mild, according to NatGasWeather.com. That should change next week, when an Arctic blast is expected to blow into the Rockies, across the Great Plains and past the Great Lakes. The industry forecaster predicts temperatures will drop low enough in North Texas and other gas-producing regions to freeze well heads and block output.

“The largest unknown right now seems to be just how far east the cold will extend and if major populations in Chicago and the East Coast will feel the frost,” Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. analysts wrote in a note to clients.