Submitted by EnergyTechStocks.com

Oil prices may be going up, but natural gas prices are “very likely going lower . . . sometime in the next six to 12 months,” according to a new forecast from Raymond James & Associates, the investment banking firm.

According to the firm’s Houston-based energy analysts, rising production from U.S. onshore natural gas plays such as the Barnett Shale are “overcoming the declining initial well productivity trends of core U.S. supply over the past decade. In addition, the start-up of the Independence hub last year is serving to temper the historical declines out of the Gulf of Mexico.”

Raymond James believes that the situation is temporary. “Eventually, gains in drilling efficiencies should gradually slow, at the same time as field decline rates trend higher and overall prospect quality diminishes.”

But through 2008 and 2009, according to the investment banking firm, natural gas prices should trend downward as supply steadily rises.