Natural gas hits March highs, nearing $3 mark

Investing.com -- The natural gas bull is going and going.

Futures of the fuel neared the key $3 mark in Monday’s trade amid prospects for warmer temperatures that could see Americans cranking up their air-conditioners more than usual this summer.

The front-month gas futures contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange’s Henry Hub settled up 4.9 cents, or 1.7%, at $2.89 per mmBtu, or metric million British thermal units. The session peak was $2.936, a high not seen since March.

“The main catalyst for this move upward comes from the heatwave that has affected many Southern states and warmer revisions of the near term forecast,” analysts at Gelber&Associates, a Houston-based energy markets advisory, said in a note to their clients in natural gas.

Temperatures in the South have reached 100+ degrees Fahrenheit earlier than expected and heat is expected to start permeating the entire lower 48 States in the coming weeks, Gelber’s analysts said.

“The associated increases in both realized and forecasted power demand are providing the fundamental support for the rally seen and as the warm weather continues to materialize this rally may test the $3MMBtu resistance in the coming days.”

Natgas up 4 weeks in row, longest winning streak since Q1 22

It has been an interesting time for natural gas, with bulls managing to keep the market in the positive for four weeks in a row -- their longest winning streak since the first quarter of 2022. This is despite the U.S. Energy Information Administration, or EIA, reporting a higher-than-expected storage number for the fuel in the latest week.

Natural gas in storage rose by 95 billion cubic feet last week, above the 88-bcf build for the week ended June 16 forecast by industry analysts tracked by Investing.com. The highest build estimate by most analysts for last week was 91 bcf.

In the prior week to June 9, utilities injected just 84 bcf into storage after burning the gas needed to meet power and cooling needs.

The latest 95-bcf build compared with a 76-bcf injection during the same week a year ago and a five-year (2018-2022) average increase of 86 bcf.

It bumped up the total volume of gas in underground caverns in the United States to 2.729 trillion cubic feet, or tcf — up 26.5% from the year-ago level of 2.158 tcf and 15.3% higher than the five-year average of 2.367 tcf.

With a near 28% gain for June, gas futures on the Henry Hub are headed for their best month in almost a year. The last time the market rallied more in a month was in July, when it gained 46%.