Natural Gas edges higher on potential colder temperatures ahead

• Natural Gas price soars near $3.20.
• The US Dollar eases after soft figures for both ISM Services PMI and ADP Employment Change.
• US Natural Gas prices could head higher on the possibility of a cold front coming in sooner than expected. 

Natural Gas prices are soaring higher despite lacklustre demand from Europe. Traders appear to be focusing on the potential cold front that should kick in later this week. It looks like the current grace period for European gas consumption will not be that long and that by the end of this month households will jack up their thermostats. 

Meanwhile, the US Dollar (USD) is turning very mixed on Thursday with several asset classes trying to claw back against the Greenback. After parts of the equity, commodity and bond markets all reached yearly lows over the past week,  it does not come as a surprise that all these are up on Thursday. The ADP and Institute of Supply Management (ISM) numbers from Wednesday took a fair bit of wind out of the sales of the US Dollar Index. 

Natural Gas is trading at $3.176 per MMBtu at the time of writing.  

Natural Gas news and market movers

• European storage sites are reporting another hike in reserves to 96.33%. 
• Fuel shipments from Norway, the top gas supplier for the EU, are recovering and are set to hit the highest level since August once the last gas fields are fully back online. 
• The most recent weather models show a substantial drop in temperatures by mid-October in Europe, which means that the current higher-than-normal temperatures aren’t expected to last long.
• Meanwhile in Australia, Chevron has reneged on the commitment it gave to the Fair Work Commission and could dent the current agreement in place in order to dissolve the strikes in Wheatstone and Gorgon LNG facilities. Union workers are set to reconvene on Thursday to discuss a possible restart of strikes. 
• Turkey’s Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar says he will travel to Israel in November to meet his counterpart and energy companies operating in the gas industry. Turkey wants to develop a framework with Israel when it comes to energy. Turkey would buy natural gas from Israel for domestic use and would also send a fraction to the European market.
• In all these headlines, one would almost forget that near 14:30 GMT the weekly Energy Information Administration (EIA) Natural Gas Storage Change for the last week of September is due. Expectations are for another build from 90 to 92 Billion cubic feet.

Natural Gas Technical Analysis: $3.3 a good end of the line

Natural Gas is soaring higher this week, with traders ignoring the higher temperatures in Europe and rather focusing on the cold front coming in. Traders are presuming that the EU will want to keep its gas reserves filled to the brim, and will buy at any time. With this prepositioning, a quick squeeze higher in the coming weeks could materialise. 

The pivotal level near $3.07 has been broken again to the upside. This level needs to hold now as a new floor, squeezing prices higher. With respect of the ascending trend channel, the upside looks limited toward $3.30 to test the upper barrier. 

On the downside, the newly formed floor at $3.07 should act as support together with the psychological $3 big figure. In case demand abates further, or more supply out of Norway comes back online, expect to see an initial drop back to the green ascending trendline near $2.95. Should that give way, $2.80 is an area with two moving averages (the 55-day and the 100-day) and the lower barrier of the trend channel that could encourage bulls to catch any falling price action. 

XNG/USD (Daily Chart)