** Shares of U.S. natural gas companies gain, tracking rise in natgas futures NGA/
** U.S. natgas futures NGc1 up 2.8% at $2.86 per million British thermal unit after a sharp decline earlier this week, buoyed by bargain buying and strong LNG export flows
** The average amount of gas flowing to the eight big U.S. LNG export plants has risen to 15.9 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) so far in August, up from 15.6 bcfd in July
** Shares of natgas companies: Cheniere Energy LNG.N up ~1%, Energy Transfer ET.N and Williams Companies WMB.N each up marginally
** NextDecade NEXT.O up 3.8% and Sempra SRE.N up marginally
** ETFs — United States Natural Gas Fund UNG.P up 1.8% and ProShares Ultra Bloomberg Natural Gas BOIL.P up 3.7%
(Reporting by Pooja Menon in Bengaluru)
((Pooja.Menon@thomsonreuters.com;))