EIA - Natural Gas Storage Report - July 7

[dan_s]

Working gas in storage was 2,311 Bcf as of Friday, July 1, 2022, according to EIA estimates.
This represents a net increase of 60 Bcf from the previous week.
Stocks were 261 Bcf less than last year at this time and 322 Bcf below the five-year average of 2,633 Bcf.
At 2,311 Bcf, total working gas is within the five-year historical range.

Over the last 13 weeks (a quarter of the year) the total storage builds have been 40 Bcf below the 5-year average; the U.S. ngas market is under-supplied.
> I believe EIA's weekly storage reports have "corrections" in them, so looking at a longer period gives you a better idea of how tight the ngas market is.
> The Freeport LNG export facility has been shut down for over two weeks, but during the last three weeks the actual builds are just 1 Bcf higher than the 5-year average. In other words, the utilities are not making any progress toward refilling storage.
> HOT weather across the SE quarter of the U.S. (that has a lot of natural gas fired power plants) is causing gas demand to offset the lost LNG exports.

There are only 19 weeks left in the refill season before winter begins, so it will be difficult to get ngas storage back to the 5-year average before the next winter heating season begins.

At the time of this post, the AUG22 NYMEX futures contract for Henry Hub gas was up $0.73 to $6.24/MMBtu. < Heavy computer trades triggered by the short's stop loss orders.

PS: Today is a good example of why I don't change the oil, ngas and NGL prices used in my forecast/valuation models each time we have a few days of FEAR-BASED moves in the commodity prices.

[Fraser921]

60 is hugely bullish, some were expecting 75 and thats with 14 offline due to freeport so it could have been 45