U.S. Natural Gas Prices Plummet After Brief Pipeline Outage

Natural gas futures in the U.S. reversed some of their gains from Thursday after a pipeline interruption in West Virginia.

The outage on TC Energy's Columbia Gas Transmission pipeline, which affects about 1.5% of total U.S. Lower-48 gas supply, caused prices to surge by 9% on Thursday to $3.225/MMBtu, the highest settlement since June 25.

However, as it now appears that the outage may be brief, prices dropped by 5.5% on Friday to $3.115/MMBtu.

Ritterbusch & Associates noted that the price response was likely exacerbated by a continued heavy speculative presence on the short side of this market.