Here is a long term natural gas chart from barchart.com:
The WSJ suggests the recent rise is due to a decline in drilling of oil:
“That is because the natural-gas supply is closely connected to oil drilling. Low crude prices have led U.S. oil producers to idle more than a thousand rigs over the past two years, resulting in a big decline in so-called associated gas, a byproduct of oil drilling. This gas typically represents about 40% of total supply, but its production isn’t particularly responsive to gas prices.
Since September 2015, associated-gas production outside the Northeast, the country’s fastest-growing gas-producing region, has fallen by nearly 9%, or about 2.5 billion cubic feet a day, according to energy data firm Platts Analytics BEntek.”
The warm winter helped, too:
“The decline in production along with an unusually hot summer has helped to shrink a record gas glut that had been pressuring prices. U.S. gas production in September was about 2.4% lower than a year earlier and down 3.5% from its peak in February, according to Platts.”
Here is the link: http://www.wsj.com/articles/natural-gas-prices-heat-up-as-oil-drilling-cools-off-1476226086
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