Bill Perkins of energy hedge fund Skylar Capital says the natural gas market could soon rev up.

With American exports of natural gas on the rise, while infrastructure “isn’t coming on fast enough,” Perkins makes the point that “we actually have a very tight market now.”

“Right now we have the demand-side infrastructure — that being exports — coming on first, and the supply-side infrastructure has not yet caught up,” Perkins said Thursday on CNBC’s “Futures Now.”

“I do believe eventually supply will catch up and kind of normalize prices, but for the next 12 to 18 months, I think the market is in an increasingly bullish position.”

The commodity has recently jumped from $2.75 per million Btu to about $3 per million Btu. During the winter, Perkins expects natural gas prices to rise to $4.

Yet Perkins grants that weather, that famous driver of natural gas, could throw a wrench in that thesis.

The supply condition is “not tight enough to overcome a very warm winter,” he said. “A warmer winter will probably keep prices in the same range — but as we go further out the [futures] curve, I think it’s extremely bullish.”

Colder weather in winter increases demand for natural gas for heating homes.

In a recent profile in The Wall Street Journal, Perkins was declared to be “the ‘last cowboy’ betting on volatile gas markets.”

In addition to his grand bets on natural gas, Perkins is known for playing poker at the highest stakes and for engaging in wild proposition bets, such as that two brothers with a 171-pound weight difference could not get to the same weight within a year’s time. If professional poker players Jamie and Matt Staples manage to pull off the feat, Perkins stands to lose $150,000.

Disclosure: Perkins is long natural gas futures and bullish call options on natural gas.

Source: Investment Cnbc
'Cowboy' trader Bill Perkins: Look for this commodity to jump more than 30 percent