NEW YORK: US natural gas futures on Wednesday settled at their lowest since an almost 17-year low hit in December, on steady forecasts for warmer-than-normal weather over the next two weeks.

Front-month gas futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange closed down 0.4 cents, or down 0.22 percent, at $1.778 per million British thermal units, keeping the market in technically oversold territory for a fifth day in a row. In addition to the March futures, which will expire on Thursday, the April, May and June contracts were also trading under $2, testing the near 17-year low of $1.684 set in December. March options expired on Wednesday.

US and European weather models kept pointing to higher-than-normal temperatures over the next two weeks, which are expected to keep heating demand light. Heating demand since the start of the industry’s November-March winter season was running about 13 percent below normal in the lower 48 US states due to the warming effect of the El Nino weather pattern.

Meteorologists predict that warmth will continue into March, with heating demand expected to be 26 percent below normal, according to Thomson Reuters Analytics.

Despite the lack of heating demand, however, consumers have used about 1 percent more gas than usual so far this winter as the power sector burns record levels of the fuel due to its low price compared with coal, which carries higher transport and environmental costs. On an mmBtu basis, gas futures this week fell below eastern coal futures for the first time this year. Prior to this week, gas has only been cheaper than coal on an mmBtu basis during a few days in December 2015 and 41 days between January and May in 2012.—Reuters