By Giulia Petroni

U.S. natural-gas futures climbed above $6 for the first time since 2014 as a massive winter storm swept across the country, boosting heating demand and threatening supply.

In afternoon trading on Monday, futures for February delivery surged 14% to $6.014 per million British thermal units after touching an intraday high of $6.293. The move follows a roughly 70% rally last week--the sharpest weekly gain in records dating back to 1990--and puts prices on track for their highest close since 2013.

Nearly 10% of U.S. gas production was knocked offline by the storm, according to analysts at DNB Carnegie, as extreme cold disrupted operations in key producing regions.

The disruption rippled into global markets. Natural-gas deliveries to U.S. liquefied-natural-gas export plants fell sharply over the weekend, raising concerns about supply abroad just as demand climbs across parts of Europe and Asia due to persistently cold temperatures.

European natural-gas prices extended last week's rally, surging above 43 euros a megawatt-hour earlier as colder-than-usual weather and low inventories tightened the market. Storage levels across the European Union have fallen below 46% of capacity, well under the five-year average.

U.S. gas inventories instead entered the winter storm in a relatively strong position. As of Jan. 16, storage levels were 4.8% higher than a year earlier and 6.1% above the five-year average, according to the Energy Information Administration's latest report.

"This suggests the market's strength should be relatively short-lived, assuming no prolonged disruptions once we get to the other side of this storm," commodity strategists at ING said.

Write to Giulia Petroni at giulia.petroni@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 26, 2026 08:41 ET (13:41 GMT)

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