Natural gas is flared off at a plant outside of the town of Cuero, Texas. U.S. energy companies are taking their foot off the natural-gas pedal, slowing down their production growth after years of furious pumping. In the past eight years, a combination of improvements in drilling techniques and high energy prices stoked natural-gas production to all-time highs. The boom quickly sent natural-gas prices to historic lows, but output kept rising because high oil prices made it profitable for producers to keep tapping fields that yielded both oil and gas. Now, the global collapse in oil prices has producers and analysts rethinking the gas boom, too. Both gas and oil prices are down about 40% in the past year, cutting the incentive to keep drilling. A flurry of recent forecasts from government and private-sector experts suggest monthly gas production will flatten and possibly even begin to decline in 2015. […]