A Surprise EIA Prints Shocks Natural Gas Awake...Kind Of

A surprise EIA storage number that showed a decently smaller natural gas storage build last week than expected shocked the market this morning, sending August natural gas prices higher by almost 2%. 

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The EIA announced that only 46 bcf of natural gas was injected into storage last week versus a market consensus in the mid to upper 50s and our estimate of 61 bcf.  

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The result was a print that was far tighter than we have seen recently. 

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While we were off on the EIA projection, however, we were correct on price action, seeing risk today skewed in a bullish direction for the first time in quite awhile. 

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This continued in our Morning Update, though we noted slightly cooler overnight trends that appeared to temporarily suppress prices as low as $2.704 before they rallied into/after the EIA print.  

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As one would expect, it was the front of the strip that received the largest boost off the supportive EIA data. 

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The result was another active day for the October/January spread we have been watching closely, which narrowed quite significantly again on the day. 

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Attention into the weekend will turn both to daily balance figures, which we break down every late morning in our Note of the Day for subscribers, as well as the latest weather trends/forecasts and expectations for next week's EIA print. The natural gas market has at least been partially woken up by this print, and in our Afternoon Update, we outlined where we see risk skewed into the weekend and what we can and cannot conclude from today's tighter print.