By John M. Biers Natural-gas futures edged lower Wednesday morning ahead of the Department of Energy's weekly inventory report. Natural-gas futures for December delivery were off 0.4 cent, or 0.1%, to recently trade at $3.828 a million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Gas futures, which reached a new 52-week high in torrid trading Tuesday, had dropped as low as $3.786 earlier in Wednesday's session before trimming some of the losses. Gas futures have picked up momentum in recent sessions amid forecasts for a cold stretch over much of the U.S. beginning this weekend and lasting into next week. Also strengthening gas: Anticipation of the weekly U.S. storage report, which will be released a day early this time because of the Thanksgiving Day holiday. A Dow Jones Newswires survey of 13 analysts and traders showed a withdrawal of 27 billion cubic feet of gas in what would be the second straight withdrawal from storage. Gene McGillian, a broker and analyst at Tradition Energy, predicted that natural-gas futures would have a hard time breaching the $4 level without a solid stretch of cold weather. The amount of gas in storage now stands 5.6% above the five-year average for this time of year. "Because of the fundamentals, the market doesn't show any real follow-through buying," Mr. McGillian said. Wednesday's weather forecasts continued to project cold weather in the coming days, but took a more cautious view on the 11-15 day forecast. WSI Corp., a private forecaster, said the 11-15 day forecast was still fluid but that the "outlook is slightly warmer than yesterday's in many portions of the Midwest and Northeast." Natural gas for next-day delivery at the benchmark Henry Hub in Louisiana recently traded at $3.65/MMBtu, according to IntercontinentalExchange, compared with Tuesday's average of $3.6209/MMBtu. Natural gas for next-day delivery at Transcontinental Zone 6 in New York traded at $4/MMBtu, up from $3.9366/MMBtu.

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