Sept 14 (Reuters) - ICE Cotton futures ended nearly unchanged in low-volume trade on Thursday, hovering near three-week lows hit in the previous session on bearish weekly export sales data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Cotton contracts for December settled up 0.03 cent, or 0.04 percent, at 69.12 cents per lb. It traded within a range of 68.43 and 69.45 cents a lb. In the previous session, prices touched 68.31 cents a lb - the lowest level since Aug. 25.
"The export sales report was very weak ... the weakest it's been in a long time but part of it was because of the hurricanes," said Gabriel Crivorot, analyst at Societe Generale in New York. "Unless Hurricane Jose takes a really unexpected path, there's probably no more strain due to weather anymore. People will just be waiting for a damage estimate (from Hurricanes Harvey and Irma)."
Earlier in the day, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported net upland sales of 65,200 running bales for the 2017-18 marketing year and 26,400 running bales for the 2018-19 marketing year in its weekly export sales report.
Total futures market volume fell by 16,416 to 20,571 lots. Data showed total open interest gained 54 to 243,940 contracts in the previous session. The dollar index was down 0.41 percent. The Thomson Reuters CoreCommodity CRB Index , which tracks 19 commodities, was up 0.23 percent.
(Reporting by Nithin Prasad in Bengaluru; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)