** Shares of U.S. natural gas companies up, tracking rise in natgas futures NGA/

** U.S. natgas futures NGc1 up 4.7% at $3.62 per million British thermal units

** Natural gas prices climb over 4% on a drop in output and forecasts for demand to rise more than previously expected this week, especially with the return to service of Freeport LNG's export plant in Texas from an outage on Tuesday

** Shares of natgas companies: EQT Corp EQT.N up 1%, Cheniere Energy LNG.N rises 1.4% and Energy Transfer ET.N up 6.6%

** ETFs — United States Natural Gas Fund UNG.P and ProShares Ultra Bloomberg Natural Gas BOIL.P rise 4.3% and 5.7%, respectively

(Reporting by Pooja Menon in Bengaluru)

((Pooja.Menon@thomsonreuters.com;))