Natural gas prices rose slightly Thursday, shrugging off government data that showed a much-larger-than-expected addition to stockpiles. The U.S. Energy Information Administration said natural-gas stockpiles grew by 80 billion cubic feet last week, compared with the 69 bcf expected by forecasters surveyed by The Wall Street Journal. The report is a widely watched measure of supply and demand. A larger-than-expected addition to storage likely indicates greater supply or lower demand than expected. Natural-gas futures prices settled up 0.8 cents, or 0.26%, at $3.049 a million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The move up reversed losses earlier in the day after the new storage data was released. “We were expecting the market to get hammered. However, prices actually rallied, which is a bullish signal,” said Santiago Diaz, price risk management associate at INTL FCStone. “It might be some speculative positioning,” he said. “Yeah—we have some bearish […]