Natural Gas Prices At Lowest Level In 2 Years

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

December 16, 2011 | 2:03 PM

The Wall Street Journal reports on the 27-month low for natural gas prices:

NEW YORK—Natural-gas futures fell in morning trading Friday to their lowest level in more than two years as forecasts for warmer weather in the coming days dashed hopes for increased demand.
Gas futures for January delivery fell as low as $3.084 a million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange, before recovering to trade up 2.1 cents $3.148. Natural-gas futures are now trading at their lowest level since Sept. 14, 2009.
ICAP analyst Drew Wozniak raised the question of whether—and when—futures might fall below $3, noting the price in the physical market already broke through the psychologically important benchmark Friday morning at the Henry Hub delivery point. “So there is a decent chance we’ll get there today by lunch,” he said in a note.

Increased domestic production – most notably in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale formation – is also playing a major role in the low prices.