The NYMEX July natural gas futures contract rose Monday on concerns about storage tightness. The front-month contract settled at $2.949/MMBtu, up 5.9 cents, after trading between $2.912/MMBtu and $2.966/MMBtu. “The market opened on a strong note, but this is not a weather-related push,” said Gene McGillian, senior analyst at Tradition Energy. The six- to 10-day outlook from the US National Weather Service calls for cooler-than-average weather in the Southwest and Rockies and warmer weather across the rest of the US. “We are two weeks into June and there is still shortness in storage,” McGillian said, adding that there were concerns in the market about the deficit to typical levels. Inventories sit at 1.817 Tcf, a 30.5% deficit to year-ago levels of 2.616 Tcf and a 22% deficit to the five-year average of 2.329 Tcf, according to Energy Information Administration data. The 92-Bcf injection that EIA posted the week that […]