Natural gas traders, TV crews ready for more wind

When billowing clouds form over the eastern Atlantic, off Africa’s coast, traders in natural gas futures start eyeing weather forecasts.  Anything with wind developing stirs up action.

Traders aren’t alone in looking at the distant horizon.  Mention a possible hurricane brewing and major media start dusting off cameras and transmission gear, notes Grumpy Editor.

Seems a tropical depression is developing in the far eastern Atlantic storm-spawning area.  That triggers jitters (so they say) with traders and enthusiasm with TV crews.

The weather disturbance, small enough not to carry a name, is simply labeled Ten-E on weather maps by meteorologists. 

Even though a storm path is impossible to determine at this point, fretting traders fear a strong storm or hurricane can mess up the Gulf of Mexico --- home to 13 percent of domestic natural gas output --- elevating prices.

Fresh in the minds of traders is that natural gas prices jumped in early August with Hurricane Dean swirling toward the gulf.  However, it skirted production areas, making landfall in Mexico.  Then, natural gas prices tumbled.

But Dean, during news-starved August, provided several days of on-scene TV footage showing water-logged cars, damaged buildings and splintered trees as it swept through the Caribbean and into Mexico.