Natural Gas Storage Report - Oct 18

[dan_s]

Working gas in storage was 3,037 Bcf as of Friday, October 12, 2018, according to EIA estimates. This represents a net increase of 81 Bcf from the previous week.
Stocks were 601 Bcf less than last year at this time and 605 Bcf below the five-year average of 3,642 Bcf.
At 3,037 Bcf, total working gas is below the five-year historical range.

Five weeks remain before draws from storage begin: We are still on-track to hit my SWAG of 3,250 Bcf in storage on November 16.

We should see a steep decline in the storage builds over the next five weeks.

[dan_s]

Dr. Joe goes over his winter weather forecast for the U.S. on his Thursday "Daily Update": https://www.weatherbell.com/premium/

From BMO Commodity Markets Research Team: "The extreme cold weather in the 6-10 day outlook for the Midwest has the market predicting a palty 50 bcf injection for the 10/19 Gas week (compares to the 5-year average of 74 Bcf) and an end of October total storage below 3.20 Tcf. Our models are indicating at 3.169 Tcf end of season figure with the last builds occurring in the first week of November."

If BMO is right about ending storage builds a week early and Dr. Joe is right about a cold November, we may see the NYMEX gas contract for January over $4.00 by the end of November.

Keep an eye on Chicago weather. When overnight lows go below freezing we should begin to see draws from storage.