Natural Gas Update December 23,2025

Overview

Natural Gas--January NG is up 16.0 cents at $4.125
NG futures have rallied further today as the weather forecasts seen the past 20 hours have added demand. The pattern seen in the prior 2 sessions continues with the front end of the NG curve seen stronger than the back.

NG spot futures rallied midday Monday off the lows as weather forecasts injected some more cold. But, NatGasWeather offers the following comment: "The weather data is still bearish overall, just not nearly as impressively so for Dec. 29-31 and also for Jan. 1-4. We were expecting stronger cold shots into the northern U.S. during the first week of January, and now some of the data is starting to show it."

Reuters on Monday noted that Lower 48 demand (including exports) was projected to rise from 127.5 BCF/d this week to 133.3 BCF/d next week. Next week's demand forecast was up 5.8 BCF/d from that seen Friday.

Asian spot LNG prices fell to a new 20-month low last week, on the back of weak demand in Asia/Pacific and ample supplies. The February deliverable price into Northeast Asia fell to $9.50 from $10.00 the week before. Kpler sees the Asian LNG price remaining "slightly bearish" due to warmer than seasonal temperatures and ample Pacific LNG supply. Stronger Chinese demand is seen arising when the price falls to the mid-$8 level. (Hellenic Shipping News) Kpler data show that an LNG tanker left Norway on Dec. 11 and is signaling an arrival in Singapore on Jan 29. This is the first time a voyage to Asia from the Norwegian terminal at Snohvit has occurred since December 2019. The JKM premium over TTF is below $2/MMBtu; yet, Kpler points out that the cargo may have been fixed one month ago when the JKM premium was wider and that some costs, including the ship charter cost, may have made the cargo more economically viable.

In Europe, the TTF price is still near the multi-year low seen 2 weeks ago. Today's TTF spot futures price is Euro 27.465, just above the recent double low of 26.530/26.535. The market is seen as amply supplied even as storage fell to 67.60%; this is versus the 5 year average of 76.9%.  An S&P analyst says that the low storage level may compel some to step up LNG buying in January and February. A different analyst says that TTF short positions held by hedge funds were raised last week, while commercial operators were said to have raised their long position to a new record high. (Hellenic Shipping news) Investment funds as of last week had built their largest net-short position since early 2020, analysts at ING said. NGI reporting says that Europe could end the winter season with the lowest amount of gas in storage seen in the past 5 years, as some U.S. LNG cargoes have been diverted to Asia.

Currently today, January and February NG futures are up 16.2 and 12.3 cents --while the March through October strip is up 8.8 to 6.1 cents. Again on Monday as was seen Friday, the January NG futures settled much better than the February and March futures. January was down 1.9 cents, February was down 9.5 cents and March was down 12.7 cents.

Technically, momentum basis the NG DC chart has turned higher, but our comment of yesterday morning remains operative as the market looks to be framed by the double top at 4.218 and the lows at 3.840-3.842 seen last week ----even as the market pierced the lower end level briefly yesterday.

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