MW: Natural Gas Advances as Storm in Caribbean Threatens to Disrupt Production
Natural gas futures rose for a third day as forecasts showed a strengthening storm over the south-central Caribbean Sea may move to the Gulf of Mexico.
The weather system has an 80 percent chance of becoming a tropical cyclone in the next 48 hours, according to the National Hurricane Center. It may become a “a strong hurricane” and move toward the eastern Gulf at the end of next week, according to MDA Federal Inc.’s EarthSat Energy Weather in Rockville, Maryland.
“You got a knee-jerk reaction higher on this storm,” said Carl Neill, an energy consultant at Risk Management Inc. in Atlanta. “Some extended heat across the country” is also supporting prices.
Natural gas for October delivery rose 6.6 cents, or 1.7 percent, to $4.032 per million British thermal units at 9:12 a.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices have risen 4.5 percent from a year ago.
Temperatures will be above normal in the eastern U.S. through Sept. 27, according to Commodity Weather Group LLC in Bethesda, Maryland.
To contact the reporters on this story: Moming Zhou in New York at Mzhou29@bloomberg.net;
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dan Stets at dstets@bloomberg.net
