U.S. natural gas futures fell about 2% to a more than two-week low on Monday, weighed down by lower demand forecasts for this week than previously expected due primarily to a drop in feedgas to the Freeport LNG export plant in Texas.
Front-month gas futures NGc1 for April delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange were 3.4 cents lower, or 1.9%, to $1.74 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) by 10:16 a.m. ET.
“As long as it’s (Freeport LNG) offline, the market is going to stay little sluggish,… there’s not enough weather demand too, to overcompensate for the that loss of demand on the LNG export” said Thomas Saal, senior vice president for energy at StoneX Financia.
Gas flows to the seven big U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) export plants slid to an average of 12.3 bcfd so far in April, down from 13.1 bcfd in March. That compares with a monthly record of 14.7 bcfd in December.
The amount of gas flowing to Freeport was at 0.1 bcfd on Monday, down from a recent high of 1.1 bcfd on Tuesday and an average of 0.4 bcfd over the prior seven days.
Financial firm LSEG said gas output in the Lower 48 U.S. states has fallen to an average of 97.6 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) so far in April, down from 100.8 bcfd in March. That compares with a monthly record of 105.6 bcfd in December 2023.
LSEG forecast gas demand in the Lower 48, including exports, would fall from 99.3 bcfd last week to 92.4 bcfd this week. Those forecasts were lower than LSEG’s outlook on Friday.
“With LNG demand still constrained, reduced output hasn’t been sufficient to prop this market much, especially with last week’s EIA storage injection coming in appreciably above virtually all industry forecasts,” energy advisory Ritterbusch and Associates said in a note.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) on Thursday said utilities injected 24 billion cubic feet (bcf) of gas to the storage during the week ended April 5.
The European benchmark wholesale gas price were mixed as record high gas storage levels in Europe helped offset geopolitical concerns and forecasts for cooler temperatures later this week.
(Reporting by Daksh Grover and Brijesh Patel in Bengaluru)