Natural Gas Price Forecast: NG=F Near $3.13 As Warm Winter Smashes The Winter Premium

Natural Gas Price Today And Market Context: NG=F Under Pressure Around $3.13

Short-Term Shock In NG=F, UNG, BOIL, KOLD And Gas Producers

Front-month U.S. natural gas futures tied to NG=F have broken to a fresh retracement low, trading around $3.13–$3.14 per MMBtu after touching roughly $3.131 intraday. The contract has shed about $0.449 week over week, a steep reset that stripped out much of the winter premium built late in 2025. The equity-linked products moved even faster. The United States Natural Gas Fund (UNG) closed near $10.40, down roughly 7.7% on the day. Leveraged products magnified the shock: BOIL dropped about 13.6%, while inverse KOLD rallied close to 13.9%. Gas-weighted producers such as EQT and Coterra lost around 2%, showing how quickly futures weakness bleeds into upstream equities when the strip reprices lower.

Weather, Heating Demand And Why Winter Is Not Doing Its Job For Natural Gas

The core problem for natural gas right now is simple: winter is not delivering sustained cold across the key U.S. heating belts. Forecasts for the Midwest and East continue to lean above seasonal norms, cutting heating degree days and directly reducing residential and commercial gas demand. That mild mid-January pattern is the primary drag on the natural gas price today, even though balances are tighter than last year on paper. Traders are treating every model run as a trading signal. Cold spikes appear in guidance, then quickly fade, and the tape follows the revisions. When models push back toward “mild,” NG=F sells off; when a colder back-half-of-January scenario appears, shorts cover and localized spot markets in the Northeast jump. The market is effectively pricing weather volatility more than structural scarcity.

LNG Exports, Power Burn And A Still-Comfortable Fundamental Balance

Despite the price slide, underlying demand is not collapsing. U.S. LNG export flows remain strong, with Gulf Coast terminals pulling steady volumes and the medium-term outlook anchored by additional liquefaction capacity scheduled through the next few years. Baseline gas-fired power burn also stays elevated as gas retains the marginal generation role over coal across many grids. These pillars limit outright downside in structural terms.
On the supply side, the signal is softening but not tight. The latest Baker Hughes data show U.S. gas-directed rigs down to about 124, the lowest reading since October, and the total combined oil-and-gas rig count around 544. That mix points to discipline rather than a collapse in drilling. Pipeline-constrained regions like the Permian still experience episodes of very weak or even negative hub pricing when takeaway is stretched, evidence that upstream output is not a current constraint. The broader balance remains “comfortable”: enough demand from LNG and power to prevent a glut narrative, but enough supply to prevent an immediate scarcity story. In that environment, weather dominates the marginal price.

Technical Structure Of NG=F: From October Wedge Breakout To Deep $3.13 Pullback

Technically, NG=F has shifted from a bullish breakout into a deep corrective leg. In October, natural gas broke out of a large falling wedge, triggering a strong upside move and a quarterly bullish reversal that produced a higher high and higher low on the Q4 2025 chart, with the year closing above the Q3 high. That structure still argues for a longer-term constructive bias, but the current retracement is testing how much of that breakout the market is willing to give back.
During the initial phase of the pullback, the market treated around $3.32 as a key support area. That level aligned with an internal uptrend line that had repeatedly caught dips during the correction. Once futures broke decisively below $3.32, that internal trend failed, and the decline accelerated. Price then sliced through a secondary zone near $3.24, which marks roughly the 78.6% Fibonacci retracement of the prior upswing, and finally printed a new low around $3.13. Trading near the session low into the close confirms that sellers are still in control.
Above the market, the 200-day moving average has flipped cleanly into resistance. Futures attempted to reclaim it, failed, and printed a bearish outside day at that rejection. Subsequent tests from below confirmed the 200-day as a ceiling rather than support. Until NG=F can close back above that average and hold, the chart supports a trend of selling strength rather than buying shallow dips.

Deeper Support Zone: $2.95–$2.86 Confluence And The $2.89 Quarterly Pivot

Below current prices, the next major technical battleground sits between roughly $2.95 and $2.86. This band is not arbitrary. It combines an 88.6% Fibonacci retracement, an interim April swing low, and a quarterly low near $2.89 that launched a sharp rally previously. The same area also aligns with a full 100% projection for a falling ABCD pattern, giving four separate reference points inside one zone.
Because the quarterly chart for 2025 already printed a bullish reversal – higher high, higher low, and a confirmed breakout above the prior quarter – the long-term structure implies that major support should ideally emerge above or around the $2.89 region. A clean break well below that area would start to challenge the entire post-wedge bullish narrative. The current path suggests that the market is leaning toward testing that confluence. The closer NG=F gets to the high-$2 range, the more likely it is that longer-horizon capital begins to treat the selloff as a strategic entry point rather than just another leg in a breakdown.

UNG, BOIL, KOLD And The ETF Translation Of Futures Volatility

The ETF complex is translating futures volatility into amplified equity moves. With NG=F hitting around $3.13, UNG closed at about $10.40, down 7.7% on the day and reflecting the front-month futures slide almost tick-for-tick. Because UNG tracks rolling near-month futures, sharp moves in the prompt contract and the shape of the curve feed directly into the share price.
Leverage heightens the effect. BOIL, providing levered long exposure, dropped around 13.6%, while KOLD, which is structured as a leveraged short, surged roughly 13.9%. These numbers show how heavily short-term sentiment is skewed toward tactical speculation rather than long-term positioning. For anyone trading these products, the message is direct: they are built for short holding periods around catalysts, not for sitting through multi-month corrections, especially when the fundamental driver is volatile weather modeling.
Gas-weighted equities have reacted more moderately but still negatively. Names like EQT and Coterra slipping about 2% shows how a weaker strip compresses cash flow expectations and pressures valuations, particularly for producers with less hedge cover or more aggressive capital plans. If NG=F continues toward the $2.95–$2.86 support band, those equities are exposed to further de-rating, even if the long-term demand story from LNG and power remains intact.

Storage, EIA Data And The Risk Of A Late-Season Surplus

Storage is the quiet anchor behind the current move. The latest EIA report indicates a 119 Bcf withdrawal for the week ending January 2, bringing working gas in storage to about 3,256 Bcf. Stocks sit roughly 3.6% below last year’s level, yet still about 1% above the five-year average. The market reads that combination as “not tight enough to justify a big winter premium.”
Forward curves reflect this reality. Henry Hub fixed forward prices for the 2025–2026 winter have drifted lower as traders increasingly price a scenario in which the season ends with more than 2.0 Tcf still in storage. This implies that unless weather turns sharply colder and stays that way, the system exits winter with a modest surplus rather than a deficit. That surplus risk is exactly what is being discounted into NG=F now.
Analysts also highlight that daily weather-driven demand may be close to a short-term trough before recovering later in January, but the key question is not the next two weeks; it is where storage lands when heating season is over. If subsequent EIA draws fail to accelerate and inventories remain clearly above historical norms, the strip will continue to lean lower, and producers will have to rely on future LNG growth and power demand to tighten balances.

Regional Cash Market Split: Eastern Strength Versus Western Softness

Spot markets underline how uneven this winter has been. For the latest weekend delivery window, spot gas prices were mostly higher in the East, where colder forecasts have lifted demand expectations and pushed hubs such as Algonquin Citygate and Tennessee Zone 6 higher. Indicative levels show Tenn Zone 6 200L around 3.625 and Algonquin Citygate near 2.77, signaling tangible, though not extreme, local tightness in Northeast and Midwest markets when storms pass through.
By contrast, hubs in the West remain under pressure. Points like Northwest Sumas and Stanfield have posted much weaker prices, including prior episodes near or below zero when pipeline congestion meets mild temperatures and strong production. That contrast demonstrates that the national benchmark NG=F masks substantial regional friction. Strong basis in the East can coexist with weak pricing in the West, and both feed back into the psychology around Henry Hub-linked futures as traders assess whether regional tightness is persistent or just weather noise.

Mild Winter, Healthy Supply And The Collapse Of The Winter Risk Premium

The phrase that sums up the current environment is “mild winter, healthy supply.” Futures for February delivery have “crumbled” in recent sessions because the market no longer believes the remainder of the season will generate enough incremental heating demand to significantly draw down storage. The 44.9-cent weekly loss in NG=F is the quantification of that shift.
Forward market commentary increasingly warns of a storage surplus reality check. The North American gas market entered 2026 with a constructive narrative built on LNG growth and power demand, but that narrative is being diluted by the combination of strong production and underwhelming winter weather. Front-month forwards have retreated as seasonal demand underperforms and supply stays robust. Unless a sustained cold regime takes hold, the market will keep shaving off any residual winter premium baked into the curve.

International Context: Turkish Power Prices And Global Gas Economics

International signals reinforce that gas remains central to power economics even as the U.S. benchmark trades lower. In Türkiye’s day-ahead electricity market for Sunday, January 11, the highest price for one megawatt-hour is set at 3,400 Turkish lira, while the lowest is about 1,399.99 lira. With the lira around 42.95 per U.S. dollar, that translates to a range of roughly $79 per MWh at the high and $33 per MWh at the low, and a daily trade volume near 1.45 billion lira.
These figures are not directly linked to Henry Hub, but they show that in key import-reliant markets, power prices are still high enough to support substantial gas-fired generation and competitive LNG imports. Even when U.S. NG=F is correcting, the global demand engine driven by power-sector needs and LNG economics remains intact. That structural demand is what underpins the longer-term bullish argument even as short-term weather and storage dominate the current price action.

Natural Gas Price Forecast; NG=F – Key Levels, Trading Logic And Risk Zones

The natural gas price forecast; NG=F setup now revolves around three numbers: the broken $3.32 support, the current $3.13–$3.14 trading band, and the deeper $2.95–$2.86 support zone anchored around $2.89. Weather models still favor a mild to only modestly colder late January, storage sits slightly above the five-year average, and the 200-day moving average has been confirmed as resistance after multiple failed retests. Together, those facts mean the short-term bias remains to the downside.
As long as futures trade below the 200-day and cannot recover the $3.32–$3.40 region on a daily closing basis, each rally toward that band is more likely to be sold than extended. The probability of a test of the $2.95–$2.86 cluster is rising, particularly if upcoming EIA reports do not show significantly larger withdrawals and if model runs continue to oscillate rather than lock in a sustained cold regime. That lower band is where the October wedge breakout, quarterly bullish reversal and multiple Fibonacci levels converge, and where the market will have to decide whether the longer-term bull thesis is intact.

Final Stance On Natural Gas: Sell Rallies Now, Watch For Long Entries Near High-$2 Support

Given the current mix of mild winter weather, comfortable storage at around 3,256 Bcf, only modest rig attrition, strong LNG and power demand but no immediate scarcity, a confirmed break of $3.32 support, and the 200-day moving average now acting as a firm ceiling, the evidence points to a bearish short- to medium-term stance on NG=F. At present levels around $3.13–$3.14, natural gas is not yet at a clear deep-value zone based on the technical and storage backdrop.
The cleaner asymmetric opportunity is to Sell or underweight natural gas on strength, treating rallies toward the 200-day moving average and the former $3.32 support band as phases to reduce risk or establish tactical shorts, rather than chasing upside. A more compelling Buy case emerges only if futures fully test the confluence support between $2.95 and $2.86, particularly around $2.89, and if that test coincides with either a decisive colder turn in weather models or EIA data that start to tighten the end-of-season storage outlook. Until that alignment appears, the position that fits the data is Sell on rallies, Hold off on new long exposure, and respect the downside risk toward the high-$2 range.

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