Take your chart back 3 years. Now show me another energy source that had even 70% of the average increase. BTW I have made some very good money from Natural Gas Futures. I've lost a little now and then, but I've kept far more than I've lost. This problem keeps getting worse. Go look at the spot market for winters between 94 and 96. These prices drove some new pipeline building (the industry in which I work). The US seems to only respond to crisis.
Since 1987, there has been a strong push (and a good one I think) to move new electric generation to using Natural Gas for lower emissions and lesser dependence on foreign oil. At the same time, environmentalist have been shutting us out of our own natural gas resources. An forced increased demand and a forced decreased supply result in the current pricing.
Perhaps over the course of the next 4-5 years, if the Fed fails to contain the incipient price inflation that is the unhappy product of their meddling (I lean pretty far towards the Austrian school). I actually think that might happen. But this winter like TexasCajun thinks might happen, and to which you responded without denying the claim? That would imply the sudden breakdown of supplies. Wouldn't the 300% spike in March be attributable to Persian Gulf II jitters? You're saying then that we will have an event of similar scope and scale affecting supplies, but on a more secular timeline? Wouldn't low inventories be addressed by normal market pressures and replenished as suppliers competed to bring increasingly larger quantities of high-priced supplies to market?
Congrats on your astute trades. The futures market is too rich for my blood; violates my rule of not risking more than 2% of capital on any single play. Maybe in a few more years though, after I have socked away considerably more, which is why I'm following the market now.