US natural gas futures fall 5% in pre-market trading
Published
No contract month or price level accompanied that figure.
The drop follows a separate episode last month that moved the market by a similar scale. On September 28, TC Energy told customers it had lifted a force majeure on its Mountaineer Xpress pipeline, part of the Columbia Gas Transmission system, after repairs to what it called an unexpected mechanical issue, according to stockpil.com. That lift sent October Nymex futures down 6.13% that day, closing at $3.00 per MMBtu as the contract rolled off the board, Energy Intelligence reported. Gelber & Associates estimated the underlying outage had affected about 1.4 billion cubic feet a day of volume, per the same report.
More recently, on October 15, Appalachian cash prices fell sharply amid a separate pipeline outage, and maintenance on the Southern Natural Gas system tightened supply and widened premiums that day, Natural Gas Intelligence reported. November futures gave back much of an early advance in that session.
Storage data add to the picture. The Energy Information Administration reported a 67 Bcf injection for the week ended October 9, lifting Lower 48 inventories to 3,567 Bcf, according to Natural Gas Intelligence. With supply disruptions from recent weeks easing, attention is shifting back to storage levels and weather-driven demand as the next pricing period begins, factors that will matter more than any single day's move for traders weighing how much of the recent price support in gas markets can hold.