Investing.com - Natural gas futures dropped to nearly two-year lows on Monday, due to milder-than-expected weather and as concerns over supply shortages during the winter heating season began to subside.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, natural gas futures for delivery in January were down 9.41% at $3.138 per million British thermal units during U.S. morning trade.
Natural gas futures came under broad selling pressure as unseasonably warm weather throughout December weighed on demand for home heating and allowed relatively low stockpiles to catch up to where they were a year ago.
The home heating fuel had received a boost last week, when weather forecasting models indicated that temperatures in the Midwest, Great Lakes and mid-Atlantic regions of the country would be lower than normal from December 27 to December 31.
Those forecasts retreated in the last 24 hours. However, meteorologists have been predicting a colder-than-normal January and February.
Approximately 49% of U.S. households use gas for heating, according to the EIA, the statistical arm of the Energy Department.