The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) on Thursday reported an injection of 52 Bcf natural gas into storage for the week ended June 21. The result was in line with expectations and left Nymex natural gas futures searching for direction.
Ahead of the 10:30 a.m. ET report, the August futures contract was down 4.4 cents at $2.701/MMBtu. The prompt month ticked up to around $2.723 when the EIA data was released. After about 20 minutes of post-print trading, it stood at $ 2.758, up 1.3 cents from Wednesday’s settlement.
August debuted as the front month on Thursday.
Prior to the report, NGI modeled a 54 Bcf increase, below the five-year average build of 85 Bcf. Injection estimates submitted to Reuters ranged from 32 Bcf to 58 Bcf, with a median of 50 Bcf. Bloomberg’s survey spanned 49 Bcf to 63 Bcf and generated a median estimate of 54 Bcf.
NatGasWeather said below average temperatures peppered the Northwest to Northern Plains during the covered period, while tropical storms delivered cooling rains to Texas, temporarily curbing demand there. However, “it was hotter than normal over the eastern half of the U.S. as well as the Southwest,” driving strong overall demand levels.
The increase for last week lifted inventories to 3,097 Bcf, keeping stocks above the year-earlier level of 2,783 Bcf and the five-year average of 2,569 Bcf. But the surplus to the five-year average did decline by 2 percentage points from the prior week to 21%. It extended a weeks-long trend. The surfeit had exceeded 40% in March.
The Midwest and East regions led with injections of 17 Bcf and 15 Bcf, respectively, according to EIA.
The South Central build of 11 Bcf followed and reflected a 14 Bcf build in nonsalt facilities and a withdrawal of 3 Bcf from salts. Mountain region stocks increased by 7 Bcf, while Pacific inventories rose by 4 Bcf.
Looking ahead to the next EIA print, analysts were anticipating another seasonally light increase.
Early injection estimates submitted to Reuters for the week ending June 28 ranged from 13 Bcf to 76 Bcf, with an average of 41 Bcf. The average estimate compares with a five-year average increase of 69 Bcf.
