BS: Natural Gas Heads for Biggest Weekly Drop Since 1996 on Stocks
Natural gas futures headed for the biggest weekly drop in 17 years in New York after a government report showed U.S. stockpiles of the heating fuel declined less than estimated.
Natural gas for April delivery slid as much as 1.3 percent in today’s electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, set for a fifth straight daily retreat. The contract was at $4.470 per million British thermal units at 12:44 p.m. in London. Volume for all futures traded was 61 percent below the 100-day average. The 27 percent weekly loss is the biggest since the week through Dec. 27, 1996, and prices slumped 9.6 percent in February.
U.S. inventories fell 95 billion cubic feet in the week ended Feb. 21 to 1.348 trillion, the Energy Information Administration said yesterday. Analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg showed a withdrawal of 102 billion. Commodity Weather Group LLC expects normal or warmer-than-average weather for parts of the Great Plains and the West from March 9 through March 13.
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Another winter storm will bring more snow, sleet and rain throughout the Northeast in the first days of March. There is a 90 percent chance that snow will fall in New York on March 2 and 3, according to the National Weather Service. Boston’s chances are 70 percent, and Philadelphia has an 80 percent chance of sleet and snow on March 3.
“It is during the last part of the storm train when the heaviest snow is likely to fall,” Alex Sosnowski, expert senior meteorologist at AccuWeather Inc. in State College, Pennsylvania, said on the service’s website. “This is projected to be Sunday to Monday over the northern part of the Ohio Valley to part of the central Appalachians and Monday into Monday night in the coastal Northeast.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Christine Buurma in New York at cbuurma1@bloomberg.net; Anna Shiryaevskaya in London at ashiryaevska@bloomberg.net
STORY: Northeast's Record Natural Gas Prices Due to Pipeline Dearth
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dan Stets at dstets@bloomberg.net
