Dave Pursell, head of macro-research for Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. Securities Inc., says, “We are headed for full (gas) storage in 2009 without something dramatic happening soon.”

?There’s an elephant in U.S. natural gas producers’ boardrooms—growing daily gas supply, storage and reserve potential. Its trunk, or gas in storage, is 1.9 trillion cubic feet (Tcf), 33% bigger than a year ago; its balance, or producible reserves in the ground, is estimated as another 2,000 Tcf.

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It’s crushing gas producers’ fiscal planning into ...