NatGas Commodity Price Up 5% Yesterday – Is the Trend Our Friend?

Yesterday the commodity price of the Henry Hub natural gas benchmark (the NYMEX front-month futures price) popped by 5%, rising 11 cents to close at $2.38/MMBtu. (Unfortunately, the price widget along the right side of the MDN website has not been updated. It still shows Friday's closing numbers, even though it uses yesterday's date.) We follow the price of gas regularly because (a) it affects how much in royalties landowners receive, and (b) it affects how profitable it is to drill, a good indicator of whether drilling will pick up or slow down. As we said yesterday, experts are predicting we've hit bottom, and the price of natgas will now begin to rise (see Big NatGas Investor Says Commodity Price has Bottomed, Going Higher). Inventories of gas are still high. The weather is still warmer than normal. So why is the price rising now?

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