A wild ride for natural gas

[Gość: advisor]

It s been a wild ride for natural gas so far this year and the biggest loops
may still be ahead. Just two months after Federal Reserve Chairman Alan
Greenspan raised his concerns about an imbalance between the fuel s supply
and demand, prices have dropped more than 20 percent. But as the 3 percent
spike this week reflects, the market s just not sure what s in store for
natural gas. Supplies are still tight ... [but] we have had below-normal
energy demand, said Robert Fuhrmann, an analyst at Myfuturesonline.com.
Natural-gas inventories have been able to build from their record lows seen
through the winter months because of mild summer temperatures throughout the
eastern half of the nation, he said. The fuel s futures price traded above
$6 per million British thermal units at the time of Greenspan s comments
June 10, down from a February high above $9, and now it s around $5 per
million BTUs. It s not hard to imagine such dramatic price moves given the
complex state of the natural-gas market at the moment. On the one hand, low
energy demand this summer has allowed U.S. inventories to replenish, as of
Aug. 1, by nearly 1.5 trillion cubic feet since mid-April