Natural gas prices rose Thursday, shrugging off bearish stockpile data, as traders focused on chances for strong demand to ease a historic glut. Natural-gas demand has kept rising in recent weeks, confounding some who expected a 40% rally in prices in the past month would lead power plants to buy other fuels instead. It hasn’t, analysts said, and as hotter weather has increased power demand, gas consumption grew about 1.5% month-to-date to nearly 67 billion cubic feet a day, according to Platts Analytics, a forecasting and analytics unit of S&P Global Platts. Natural gas for July delivery settled up 2.1 cents, or 0.8%, at $2.698 a million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Front-month prices have gained 37% since the June contract expired at just $1.963/mmBtu on May 26. The market is now up in four of the last five sessions, raising month-to-date gains to 18%. […]