US natural gas futures turned slightly lower on Thursday but remained within a few cents of unchanged on a storage build that was close to expectations. The US Energy Information Administration said utilities added 76 billion cubic feet of gas into storage during the week ended May 1, close to analysts' 75-bcf estimate in a Reuters poll.
That compared with builds of 81 bcf last week, 75 bcf a year earlier and a five-year average increase of 68 bcf. Front-month gas futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange fell 2.1 cents to $2.755 per million British thermal units at 10:38 am EDT (1438 GMT).
In the minutes after EIA released the report, the front-month slipped from a rise of 0.3 percent to a drop of 0.2 percent. Some of the most active options early Thursday were the $2 July and August 2015 puts. Thomson Reuters Analytics said the Global Forecast System weather model for the lower 48 US states continued to call for warmer-than-normal temperatures over the next two weeks.
Population-weighted cooling degree days were expected to continue exceeding heating degree days with 46 HDDs and 90 CDDS. That put HDDs for the next two weeks below the 74-HDD norm for this time of year and CDDs above the 66-CDD norm. With cooling demand higher than normal, consumption in the lower 48 was expected to average 54.6 billion cubic feet per day over the next two weeks, up from 54.0 bcfd on Wednesday, according to Thomson Reuters Analytics. That compared with a 30-year norm of 51.0 bcfd for this time of year and actual demand over the past two weeks of 56.0 bcfd, the lowest since October. Thomson Reuters Analytics, meanwhile, forecast production would ease to 72.7 bcfd from 73.3 bcfd on Wednesday.
Comments
Comments are closed.