Natural gas futures closed lower Thursday, whipsawing from gains to losses after traders overlooked a strong storage drain to focus on the larger bearish influence of record production. The front-month January contract settled down six cents, or 1.6%, at $3.642 a million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It is only 2.3% above the low closing price of the year of $3.561/mmBtu, which was set Oct. 27. Storage levels shrank by 64 billion cubic feet in the week ended Dec. 12, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said. That was more than the 61 bcf drain for this week a year ago and well below the 157 bcf five-year average, likely because unseasonably warm weather led to softer demand for heating, analysts said. Prices initially incrementally added to gains on the news but flipped to losses within a half-hour of the EIA update. While […]