Natural Gas Futures Deepen Declines as Forecasts Cool Down Further — MidDay Market Snapshot

As weather forecasts trimmed more demand from the mid-August outlook, natural gas futures continued to move lower through midday trading Wednesday.

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Here’s the latest:

• September Nymex natural gas contract down 10.2 cents to $2.024/MMBtu as of 2:25 p.m. ET
• Weather modeling trending cooler in midday updates, per NatGasWeather

The American weather model shed 3 cooling degree days of demand on Wednesday to put it more in line with the European model’s weaker demand reading, according to NatGasWeather.

Maxar’s Weather Desk said a pattern change during the Aug. 5-9 time frame was projected “as a ridge builds northward over western North America and starts to direct cooler air masses downstream.”

Maxar’s forecast maintained above normal temperatures in the West, but cooled from the Rockies to the East. “Temperatures fall into the below-normal category during the mid- to late-period in the Midwest while early above-normal temperatures from the Mid-Atlantic to the mid-South moderate toward seasonal levels during the late period,” the firm said.

• NGI modeling 29 Bcf injection into Lower 48 storage for week ending July 26

The five-year average injection for the period is 33 Bcf, while 15 Bcf was injected in the year-ago period, U.S. Energy Information Administration data show.

The Lower 48 surplus versus the five-year average stood at 456 Bcf as of the week ending July 19. The year-on-five-year surplus has trended lower in 10 of the past 11 weekly reports, narrowing the surplus by 190 Bcf over that period.

• Cash prices at NGI’s Henry Hub on track to halt a six-day slide, averaging up 13.0 cents to $1.930, according to NGI’s MidDay Price Alert
• El Paso Permian prices up 77.5 cents to negative 30.5 cents; SoCal Citygate up 71.0 cents to $2.740

U.S. LNG export terminals were scheduled to receive around 13.15 Bcf of feed gas Wednesday, up about 0.2 Bcf day/day, NGI data show.

Aiding the rebound at Henry Hub, feed gas flows to Cheniere Energy Inc.’s Sabine Pass liquefied natural gas terminal in Louisiana bounced back to about 4.4 Bcf/d on Wednesday.

Flows to the Freeport LNG terminal in Texas were steady at about 2.2 Bcf/d.