Natural gas prices trade in a fairly tight range of just under 4 cents today, despite being an "EIA report" day. The August contract settled just over 2 cents higher on the day.
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One reason for the lack of significant movement? Today's EIA report, despite the uncertainty around how much influence Hurricane Barry would have on the number, wound up almost dead on with the consensus market estimate, with last week's build being 36 bcf.
The draw in the salts was very impressive, but the overall report, while a lower build than the 5-year average, was reflective of supply-demand balance that are still too loose to support a move higher, as seen when looking at the trend line of this same gas week in recent years.
In fact, despite prices still being at historically low levels and a July that turned out to be a top-tier hot month in terms of national demand, end-of-season storage forecast have still not made a move lower, as the supply/demand balance has not tightened like what typically is observed with prices this low. As the saying goes, "low prices is the cure for low prices", and at some point that will again be true, but we have not reached that point as of this writing.
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