美国天然气期货周二下挫约5%，创下四周新低，因为产量飙升加上需求预测下降，拖累价格下跌，尽管库存比五年来的标准低11%。

美国东部时间下午1点10分，美国天然气下跌5.2%，至8.38美元。

在能源信息署（EIA）截至8月26日当周的最新报告显示天然气库存增加610亿立方英尺后，产量仍保持强劲。虽然这使库存达到2640亿立方英尺，但仍比去年同期的水平低2280亿立方英尺。

促使库存下降的原因还有位于墨西哥湾沿岸的关键的自由港液化天然气出口工厂的停工。

这一停工意味着交易商正在计算每天约有20亿立方英尺的天然气没有被自由港用于出口，而是留在了国内市场上。

占美国液化天然气出口能力约20%的自由港似乎将继续停产直到11月上半月。届时可能看到的只是自由港产能的部分启动，才能在该月月底前提升到全额产能。然而，自6月宣布不可抗力后，自由港已经多次推迟了重启日期，然后又撤销了由于不可抗力停产的声明。

6月8日，自由港发生爆炸，导致工厂停工进行损失评估和维修。

9月份到目前为止，即使自由港停工，Refinitiv的数据显示，美国液化天然气出口工厂的平均抽气量上升到112亿立方米，高于上个月的平均110亿立方米。

寿琳玲 编译自 今日油价

原文如下：

U.S Natural Gas Futures Shed Over 5% On Soaring Output

U.S. natural gas futures shed around 5% on Tuesday, hitting a four-week low as soaring output coupled with lower demand forecasts drags prices down, despite the fact that inventories are 11% lower than their five-year norm. 

U.S. natural gas was down 5.2% at 1:10 p.m. EST, to $8.38.

Output is still holding strong after the latest report from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) for the week ending August 26, which showed a natural gas inventory build of 61 billion cubic feet. While that brings inventory to 2,640 Bcf, it is still 228 Bcf below levels at the same time last year–heading into the winter season. 

Also prompting the decline is the outage at the key Freeport LNG export plant on the Gulf coast. 

That outage means traders are calculating some 2 billion cubic feet of gas per day that is not being consumed by Freeport for export and is remaining on the domestic market.

Freeport–which accounts for some 20% of U.S. LNG export capacity–looks set to remain offline until sometime in the first half of November, at which point we could see only a partial startup, ramping up to full capacity by the end of that month. Freeport, however, has already pushed back a restart date several times since declaring force majeure–and then revoking it–in June.

On June 8, Freeport suffered an explosion, causing the plant to shut down for damage assessment and repairs. 

So far in September, even with the Freeport outage, Refinitiv data showed a rise in the average volume of natural gas being pumped into American LNG export plants to 11.2 Bcfd, up from the average of 11 Bcfd last month.