Natural gas closed lower Tuesday as traders start anticipating soft demand throughout the peak winter heating season, analysts said. The front-month January contract settled down 10 cents, or 2.7%, at $3.619 a million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The price is back down to within 3 cents of the seven-week low from Dec. 8 and nearing bear market territory. While weather forecasts are starting to show below-normal temperatures for the end of the month, the next week is still unseasonably warm. That suggests below-normal demand for home heating, the primary driver for natural gas consumption. With only a month to go until winter usually hits its coldest point, traders are starting to think the coming cold could be too late to create enough heating demand to absorb the record supply of U.S. natural gas, analysts said. “Each day that goes past and […]