naturalgas prices have soared in the past few weeks and investors are now betting that the surge is going to last that has given huge momentum to gas futures and to stocks of producers us natural gas futures expiring in may were trading above 7 per million british thermal units on thursday after briefly crossing that level on wednesday for the first time since 2008 what’s even more notable is that gas futures expiring much further in the future are also trading at very high levels in fact every futures contract from now through february 2023 was trading above 7 as of thursday morning even the january 2024 contract was above 5 last year when natural gas started to spike latermonth futures mostly lagged behind on the assumption that the price of gas would eventually return to its old trajectory between 2009 and 2021 natural gas futures closing prices had averaged 330 and had stayed mostly within a tight range there was simply too much supply and too little demand now investors are confident that prices will average at least twice that high for months if not years that’s also boosting confidence in the prospects for natural gas producers many of which had lagged behind their oilfocused peers during the rally from the depths of covid in the past month gas producer coterra energy ticker ctra is up 26 and chesapeake energy chk is up 23 gas producer and exporter tellurian tell is up 66 “the calls i’m getting now show that a lot of longonly investors have the confidence that this isn’t just shortterm” said truist analyst neal dingmann in an interview “they think they have a two or threeyear play on a lot of these” among the stocks that dingmann thinks has strong prospects is eqt eqt a pennsylvania producer that’s among the largest in the country the biggest reason that natural gas is rising so much in the us is that foreign countries are signing large deals to import usproduced gas in the form of liquefied natural gas or lng europe wants american gas so that countries there can pivot away from russian gas and asian countries want us gas so they can reduce their dependence on coal which causes higher carbon emissions the us surpassed qatar as the largest exporter of liquefied natural gas in december and its capacity continues to grow the fate of natural gas was less certain a year ago as countries made pledges to reduce carbon emissions more quickly but it is becoming increasingly clear that natural gas demand will stay high for several more years if not decades proponents consider it a key “bridge” fuel as countries build out their renewable energy portfolios the first thing a visitor to eqt’s website will see today is a large headline saying “unleashing us lng” along with “replacing international coal with american natural gas is the largest green initiative on the planet and the world’s best weapon to address climate change”