From the Wall Street Journal:
Natural-gas futures fell again Thursday morning on forecasts of warmer weather returning after the cold spurt that is now hitting key consuming regions.
Although natural-gas futures were higher on Wednesday, the commodity has largely been in retreat over the last month as warm weather has persisted. Forecasters are eyeing a return to mild temperatures in January.
The natural-gas contract for January delivery, which expires Thursday, fell 6.8 cents, or 2%, to trade recently at $3.324 a million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The February contract was off 5.5 cents to $3.370.
Matt Rogers, a meteorologist at Commodity Weather Group, a private forecaster, said there is "fairly good confidence" that colder weather will prevail over the next 10 days. But weather models continue to point to warmer weather beyond that period.
"It looks like a warm-up is coming in the Jan. 6-10 period, but there is a chance it could persist into the Jan. 11-15 period," Mr. Rogers said. If the warmer weather develops, he said, it won't be as warm as the equivalent period last year or the first part of this month....MORE
